All The People I've Become
by CompletelyOriginalUsername
Summary: Rachel-centric short pieces...pretty much run the gamut emotionally, from very dark to very light
1. Evil Twins

She bit her lip until it bled.

It wasn't right; it wasn't fair that she should have been blessed with a pretty face. When she was little, the beautiful girls were the heroines, the princesses, the girls who always did the right thing and said the right thing.

That wasn't who she was, and in her darkest moments she hated being considered beautiful by the world, hated that the ugliness inside her wasn't visible.

Maybe if everyone could look at her and see what Jake, Cassie, Marco, Ax and she was certain even Tobias saw, at least she wouldn't feel like a liar as well as a psycho.

((But why would you have to choose, Psycho Rachel? Both are best!))

She sprang straight up in bed, feeling her skin clinging to the sweat-soaked sheets.

"Crayak." In her head she furiously screamed the name, but all she could muster out of her lips was the whisper of a scared little girl having a nightmare. She rolled over onto her side and clutched her pillow to her ear.

((You know you can't block out thought-speak.)) Evil laughter echoed off her bedroom walls.

"I know I'm dreaming. You think I haven't had nightmares before? You think I can't handle them?" Was she talking to Crayak or herself?

((Does this sound familiar))? And then the voice changed. It was no longer confident and smarmy. Now it was pleading and desperate.

((No! Please! Oh God, don't do this! I give up, okay? I'll do whatever you want! Please…I can't live like this!))

"David." Her voice was cold now, emotionless.

((Yes, David! Your little twin! Ruthless, willing to destroy anything that gets in his way, just _loves_ the thrill of killing a morph so he can ignore the fact that what he's slaughtering isn't really an animal. Sound familiar?))

The voice changed into David's again. ((I'll kill you! I'll kill you all! I swear to God, if you don't let me out of here I'll kill you all…I'll rip you open…I'll watch you die and I'll _love _it.))

The last, desperate anger of a person defeated.

The same bloodlust, the same hatred she felt right before ripping an enemy's throat out. Right before the war ahead of them and the battle before them no longer mattered. Right before all that mattered was the fact that there was an enemy in front of her and she was going to be the death of them because…

((Because why?))

"He was right about me."


	2. Put On Your Poker Face

"You know, Ax, I didn't think you'd be much good at this."

((You did not believe that I would be able to deduce the point behind this simple human game?))

She smiled despite herself. "Of course I knew that an Andalite such as yourself couldn't possibly have trouble comprehending something that came from a human brain."

((I am becoming more adept at detecting sarcasm.))

"Good for you. Now answer me. We've both been stalling."

((I believe I would like to stay.))

"Okay. Cool. I'll stay too. Now show me your hand."

Ax spread out his cards before her and Rachel shook her head, smiling wryly. "I thought you were bluffing."

((Was that not the object of the game?)) It almost sounded like sarcasm.

"Yeah, that's the object of the game all right. I should have kept going. I could have taken one more hit."

((Show me your hand.))

Rachel held up her cards with a self-mocking flourish. "Fifteen. You got twenty-one. You win again."

((Yes, it would appear so.))

She smiled. "I can't believe I thought I could out-bluff an Andalite. You guys have the best poker faces in the universe."

((Poker faces?))

"That's a game for another day."

((Is this poker another game involving the cards with symbols on them? I am apparently quite adept at such games.))

"Yes, it would appear so."


	3. Perfect Silence

The adrenaline was starting to kick in.

She could feel the sweat trickling down her forehead and the familiar strain in her muscles. She was pushing herself hard today. She didn't listen to headphones. She never did. The music just felt like another distraction, something else for her mind to focus on. Her mind was supposed to be silent, just silent for a little while, and allow her body to do all the work. She just focused her gaze forward and ran; pushing her body as far as it would go.

She was still in great shape, but she didn't run to burn calories or to tone muscles. And she never ran at a comfortable pace. The only way to get what she wanted from this, the beautiful silence in her mind, was to push herself and push her body, focusing her entire being on this task.

One foot in front of the other.

Faster and faster.

Almost like flying.

Almost.

She finally reached the woods. The woods that everyone said weren't safe to run in. Especially if you were a young girl alone at night. Not every girl could morph into a grizzly bear and eat a rapist if she had to.

But this girl could.

This girl could do a lot of things that were impossible and crazy and terrifying and wonderful.

One foot in front of the other; she focused on the bird. She pictured its feathers and its beak and its claws in her mind as she raced up the hill.

She started to change. Lips became beak, skin became feathers, hands became claws.

She smiled not with her mouth, because she no longer had one, but with her heart.

This girl could fly.


	4. Necessary Roughness

She presses herself against him.

Roughly.

More roughly than she intended, but he responds well.

Even in intimate moments, when she imagines most girls would long for gentleness, she allows herself to become overzealous and rough. He matches her stroke for stroke, rough kiss for rough kiss. It surprised her at first, because he is truly a gentle soul.

But he needs this just as much as she does.

The truth is that they need this just as much as they need each other.

Pent-up lust, deep love, the need to feel and the need to forget about feelings make a potent combination.

His fingers catch in her tangled hair and they both smile. She almost laughs, but he covers her mouth. This little luxury is contingent on them being as quiet as possible.

She rolls off of him and onto her side. He presses his body into hers and wraps them both up in the covers.

They both stay silent for a little while.

"You know I wish I could stay."

"I know." And she does know that he wishes he could stay the night, the week, even the year without having to leave his human body behind and fly away. Does he really wish that he could stay with her long-term, leave the hawk body behind?

She doesn't know and she's tired of wondering, tired of asking. Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe they won't get the chance to find out.

Maybe they'll make it work.

Too many maybes, and all that matters right now is what's certain.

"Rachel, I…"

"Yeah, I know. Me too."

"One hour and forty-nine minutes. I've gotta go."

"I know. Happy flying."

"Sleep well."

For the first time in weeks, she actually does.


	5. Hilarious Contradictions

She almost didn't even ring the doorbell, and she regretted it as soon as she did.

When no one came to the door for about two seconds, she saw her out and turned around to leave.

"Hey, Rachel!"

She whirled around to see him standing there, trademark grin on his face.

"What's up? I'm not signing autographs right now, but if you write a letter to my manager I'll be sure to send you a signed photo."

She hesitated. Usually she had ready-made retorts for Marco. Not this time, though.

He seemed to notice the suspicious pause without her saying something hateful. The grin remained, but genuine concern seeped into his eyes.

"Is something going on?" He stepped forward onto the porch, closing the door behind him. He lowered his voice and the grin evaporated. "Is there an emergency?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Oh…ok." He paused awkwardly, trying unsuccessfully to read her eyes for a signal on how to proceed.

"I just need to talk." She blurted it out so quickly, so awkwardly. She wanted to kick herself. She hated being vulnerable in front of him, but she had come here willingly.

"Oh…well…" Marco seemed at a loss for words. For once.

"Come on in." He held the door wide open for her.

She hesitated. It was such a delicate balancing act between her and Marco. There was a level of attraction. Two alpha personalities drawn to each other. Then there was the animosity. His disdain for her willingness to march into battle head-on, consequences be damned. Her disdain for his over-thinking every single action.

The truth was, she had no idea why she ended up on his doorstep. Walking in that door could lead to anything from fooling around to punching each other in the face. And, God help her, she liked not knowing where this was going.

"Are you coming in or not, Xena?"

"Don't call me that." She strutted through the door like she owned the place.

"Is your dad home?" Another easy out.

"Is my dad ever home?" A challenge.

She didn't respond; stood frozen in place.

"So what's up?" His tone was casual but his eyes were shrewd, trying to read her eyes and realizing how daunting a task that was.

"Nothing. What's up with you?" It turned out forced casualness wasn't her strong suite.

He sighed, impatient. "Look, Rachel, it's kind of late and…"

"How do you do it?" she blurted out.

"How do I do what?"

"How do you laugh everything off? Make everything a big joke? How do you…" She almost choked on the words. "How do you sleep at night?"

Marco laughed, but it wasn't the Marco laugh that she was used to. This laugh was laced with bitterness; a laugh that could easily be a sob if you listened closely enough.

"Who says I sleep at night?"

"I just…" She moved closer to him, expecting him to back away. He didn't.

"I just need to know how you do it. I need to know how to get through it like you do."

There was something in his eyes that looked like pity and she hated it.

"Rachel…"

"How?"

"Why are you talking to me about this? Is Tobias occupied with an unruly mouse or something?"

She moved even closer to him, daring him to take a step back, wondering if he would. He still didn't.

"I just…I knew you would understand, okay? It's just…okay, here's the thing…my dad, he called me today. He doesn't call very often, I mean, not as often as he should. But I was glad he called, and we were having a really good talk. And then he asks me…my dad asks me … 'You haven't really said much about what's going on with you. What are you up to, Princess? Saving the world?'…And I just burst out laughing, because it's the funniest thing. All these years of wanting to share more with him and now I can't share anything. And I knew you were the only person in the world who would understand how fucking _ funny_ that is."

He put his hand on her shoulder and she didn't shrug it off. "That is ironic." He gave her a sad smile. "So do you want to cry about it, Xena? Do you want to let it break you, or do you want to flip it off and laugh in its face?"

She nodded. "I guess I want to flip it off and laugh in its face."

He held his hands up like he was surrendering. "Then I'm your man."

"Well, thanks." She started to back up towards the doorway. "Good talk. Thank you."

"Why did you come here tonight, Rachel?" If she didn't know better, she'd think that he sounded almost hurt. "Did you want a shoulder to cry one, someone to vent to , the one millionth guy to tell you that you're beautiful? I bet that never gets old."

"Give me a break, Marco," she snapped, angry now.

"You give _me_ a break," he snapped right back at her. "You're the one showing up on my doorstep. So why don't you just stay already?"

"Stay?"

"Yeah, stay." His eyes softened. "My dad…I don't know when he'll be back, if he even comes back at all tonight. So it looks like it's just me…and you…just stay."

"Okay." Her voice wavered, but she plopped down on the sofa in the family room as confidently as a model posing for a photograph.

He sat down next to her. "So what do you want to do?"

She shrugged.

They looked at each other, the night full of unanswered questions.


	6. I Like My Coffee With Extra Guilt

"You look tired this morning. Didn't sleep well?"

Her mom walked into the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee. "Do you want me to pour you one? Coffee before school can work wonders."

"No thanks, Mom. I'm good."

"You sure?"

She felt a pang of guilt. Her mom was really trying hard.

"Are you okay, Rachel?"

That's what broke her heart. The answer, of course, was no. If she could have, she would have screamed "No!" and ran into her mother's arms. She would have cried there, letting her mother smooth back her hair and tell her everything was going to be alright. The distance between her and Naomi wasn't the teenage rebellion she knew Naomi thought it was. She would have told her mother everything, if she could have.

But of course she couldn't.

"I'm fine Mom." They both knew she wasn't fine; both had different reasons in their heads to explain her lying.

"Well, okay then." Her mother forced a smile. "You know I'm here if you ever need to talk about anything, right?"

"Yeah, Mom, I know."


	7. Gym Class And Other Traumas

Rachel was bored out of her skull.

She wished one of the others was in her gym period. Cassie or Jake would keep her from doing something reckless out of sheer boredom. Marco would probably encourage it. Maybe she could have snuck off with Tobias when no one was paying attention, gone away with him into their own little world.

Tobias wasn't anywhere near fourth period gym class, of course. He didn't belong in that world anymore.

She didn't belong there either. And she knew it. Before, she would have turned around and snapped at the boys behind her she could hear muttering about how her ass looked and what it would be like to get their hands on it .Now their voices were just annoying static, a T.V. channel that she wasn't really watching playing in the background. It wasn't hard to admit that she just didn't care what her classmates thought or said about her anymore. She knew she had developed a reputation for being moody, distant and generally unpleasant. And she just didn't…

"Bitch."

Okay, maybe she still cared a little.

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me. Stay away from my boyfriend."

Rachel actually laughed. "I don't know who you are and I don't know who your boyfriend is."

She turned to walk away, but the girl grabbed her arm. Rachel felt the anger surge through her, and she struggled to control it. "Don't touch me."

The girl took her arm off of Rachel, but stepped forward so they were standing face to face. Rachel could sense some of the people around them starting to take notice, starting to listen.

"My name's Leslie. And I want you to stay the hell away from Chris."

She wracked her brain. Who the hell was…_oh_.

She spent some time talking to Chris during study hall. They were both bored, both too tired to focus on getting homework done, and they both wanted a distraction. Twice now they'd shared a table in the library and swapped stories.

Chris was a really nice guy. Nice enough to make her wonder what Tobias would think…

But they had just talked a couple of times. Chris was exhausted because he had to work in his family's restaurant at night. They were struggling to make ends meet. He told her how tired he was. Tired of feeling the weight of more responsibility than other teenagers. Tired of listening to people complain that their parents wouldn't buy them a new cell phone or an iPod when the idea of having extra spending money sounded pretty foreign to him.

Rachel understood. Her family had never really struggled financially, even though that's why she told Chris she understood what he was going through. Even after the divorce, both her parents had always had enough money to give her and her sisters everything they needed and most of what they wanted. And there was no way she could hold down a job, even though she told Chris that she worked nights too. The Chee were filling in for her enough as it was.

She didn't really feel like a liar, though, talking to Chris. The details were lies, but all of the details in her conversations were necessary lies these days. She did work every night, every day, every weekend, every second at a job that had destroyed her ability to have a normal conversation with the nice guy in study hall without wondering if there was a Yeerk in his brain, pulling the strings like a demented puppet master.

And now she was cursing herself for trying to make even that small connection with another person, because his girlfriend was clearly insane.

"Just stay away from him, okay?" It started as a command but ended as a plea.

Rachel looked at Leslie…really looked at the girl. Leslie was pretty. Her clothes and hair and makeup were perfectly arranged…too perfectly arranged. Rachel guessed that Leslie would wash it all off and start over if her fingers slipped while applying eyeliner. How could someone look so controlled on the outside and be insecure enough to be furious over her boyfriend sitting alone with another girl in study hall?

How could a warrior, a killer, a child soldier cling to the threads of her favorite dresses as if they were the last threads connecting her to sanity?

"I'll stay away from him, okay? Let it go." Rachel knew herself well enough to know that she needed to walk away from this situation. She started to walk away and…

"Let it go? _You_ let it go!" Leslie called after her. "Don't you know what people say about you? You're weird, you're always off in your own little world, you strut around like you think you're the hottest girl in the world who's way too good to even talk to anyone else! And _now _you're making a play for somebody? I don't need this crap. Just stay away from my boyfriend, you freak."

Rachel took a deep breath. She had a brief moment of clarity where she imagined herself calmly walking out the gymnasium.

Then she punched Leslie in the face. Hard.

She didn't feel sorry when she saw the blood. She didn't feel sorry when the gym teacher came to class late and sent her to Chapman's office. She didn't feel sorry explaining the situation to her mother. She didn't even feel sorry when Chris went out of his way to avoid her in study hall.

She did feel sorry when she walked out of Chapman's office to find Jake, Cassie and Marco staring at her. They had identical expressions on their faces and she knew they were all thinking the same thing.

Jake was the only one who said it.

"Goddamn it, Rachel."


	8. Cheater, Cheater, Pumpkin Eater

He caught up with her on one of her runs.

"What's going on?"

She didn't slow down, forcing him to keep up with her pace. She saw that he was struggling a bit, but he would keel over before admitting it.

Typical Jake.

"Nothing. Just running."

He laughed. "That is just so…so Rachel. Gotta save the world and still carve out some time for cardio."

She stopped running. He had pulled her out of her zone now anyway. "It's not exactly my cardio. More like…my therapy."

He nodded. "I get it."

"How'd you know I come this way, anyhow? You stalking me, Fearless Leader?"

"Not really, Workout Barbie. Figured I'd go for a jog, and I wanted to take a route that no one else would want to take. And here you are."

"Workout Barbie?" She cocked an eyebrow at him.

He laughed again, openly mocking her. Always a dangerous move. "Yeah, your little workout suit with the matching pink. Workout Barbie."

She punched him in the arm. "Whatever. And since when do you jog?"

"I'll race you to the woods," Jake challenged.

Now it was Rachel's turn to laugh at him. "Excuse me? You'll race me? This is the first time you've jogged in, what, ever?"

"Hey now, I used to be a pretty good basketball player."

She rolled her eyes. "You were a _decent_ basketball player. I was a _great _gymnast."

"It's all used to be's now, isn't it?" The playfulness was gone and Jake The Old Soldier was staring her in the face. This was the Jake she knew best, the Jake she had the most experience dealing with. They had never been terribly close back when they were just cousins and not fellow warriors. But she remembered glimpses of the person he used to be.

Running around in his backyard together, along with Tom. Just kids messing around, testing the boundaries of the limited world they knew. The most conflict they had in their lives was who was going to win a game of touch football; the biggest battle scars an accidental bloody nose.

Rachel grinned at her cousin, suddenly feeling ten years old again. "Okay, fine. Let's race."

He grinned back at her with the happy face of a little boy who didn't exist anymore. "On the count of three. One…two…"

She took off running, laughing as she went.

"Rachel!" He took off after her. "You cheater!"

"Catch me if you can!"


	9. I Thought You'd Never Ask

"Oh, by the way, we're going to the dance Friday night."

Tobias almost choked on his burger with extra cheese, hold the mayo.

"We're going where? When?"

"The dance on Friday night," she repeated, smiling her dangerous Rachel smile. "You're taking me."

"I am?"

"You are." She finished the last bite of her sandwich.

He sighed. "Rachel…"

"What?" she interrupted. "You don't have a suit? Borrow one from Jake, or we can go get you one. You're worried about time? There will be plenty of empty rooms for you to demorph and remorph in. I've thought of everything."

She leaned back against the tree, feeling the grass between her toes. Waiting for him. Impatient.

"What, you don't want to go with me?"

He reached for her hand and held onto it. "You know I want to go with you."

"So ask me," she challenged.

Tobias looked completely confused. "You just asked me."

"Yeah, but I always wondered what it would be like to be asked out to the big dance…"

"Wait a minute," he cut in. "I don't believe for a second that you haven't been asked to a dance."

"Let me finish…I always wondered what it would be like to be asked out to the big dance by the guy I actually wanted to go with."

He didn't say anything for a minute, and she worried that maybe she had just embarrassed herself. Then he stood up. "Okay, come on, let's do this right then." He motioned for her to stand up with him.

He took both of her hands in his and stared into her eyes.

Dramatically, self-mockingly, lovingly.

"Rachel Berenson, would you like to go to the gymnasium with me and eat terrible food, listen to terrible music and watch my terrible dancing for two hours at a time?"

"I guess, if I don't have something better to do."

He kissed her.


	10. Charity Case

"Okay, let's see here…donate…donate…donate…"

She went hanger-by-hanger through Cassie's closet. They were supposed to be sorting out clothes that Cassie never wore anymore, or didn't fit, to donate to charity. Instead, Rachel was just eliminating all the clothes she didn't like.

Which was pretty much all of them.

Cassie smiled good-naturedly. "Rachel, I'm not donating _all _my clothes. I have to have something left to wear."

"I'm sure Jake would disagree with that." Rachel smirked.

"Besides," Cassie said, deliberately ignoring her, "just because it's not your style doesn't mean it's horrible."

Rachel held up a sweater with a picture of a smiling puppy on it. "Really?"

"I just wear that around the house sometimes," Cassie insisted defensively. "It's old, I don't really care if I get it dirty, and I have to have some clothes to fall back on in case there's a huge mess in the barn…"

Rachel's expression of disgust remained the same.

"Fine. Donate."


	11. Smells Like Team Spirit

There were still traces of blood underneath her fingernails.

Sometimes there was just so much, and demorphing couldn't get it all…as if some battles produced so much carnage that the universe could not in good conscious allow her to be washed clean.

"Oh God, Jake, let's not ever cut it that close again." There was not even the slightest trace of humor in Marco's voice.

"I know," Jake agreed, sounding stricken. "We just didn't have a choice, though. We knew the Yeerks would be moving tonight and we couldn't let them complete the…"

"Didn't have a choice? Did you see how much life Rachel slaughtered in just the last ten minutes? Or am I the only one who saw that?" Cassie had had her back to the group, but now she whirled around to face them all.

"_We_, Cassie. What you meant to say was how much life _we_ slaughtered. Not just me." Rachel focused her gaze in on Cassie like a hunter targeting her prey.

She was exhausted. She remembered clawing and biting and growling her way through a solid wall of Hork-Bajir and Taxxons, the blood splattering her grizzly fur a sickening red until it looked like a coat of paint. She remembered the smell more than the feel of it. There was physical pain, of course. There always was. But adrenaline made pain bearable in the moment and demorphing made it bearable in the long run.

But that _smell_. How had it never struck her like this before? The rusty, iron stench of animal blood mixed with the singeing, rotting flesh of the Hork-Bajir and Taxxons.

The smell of death. But she was still high on the rush of having barely escaped with their lives yet again, so it was also the smell of victory, repulsive as it was.

Rachel stood up on slightly wobbly legs. Her muscles ached, her head pounded, and that smell…

She wasn't going to be their villain. Not tonight.

"What I remember, Cassie, is saving your life." Her voice was as cold and empty as the night air that continued to assault them through their paper-thin morphing outfits.

((Rachel.)) Tobias flew down from his perch on the tree and landed on the old, dead stump she had been sitting on. ((Please.)) His thought-speak voice that she could read just as well as his human one was unusually stern.

"Please _what_?" She was on a roll, and even Tobias wasn't going to pacify her tonight.

((I believe Tobias would like you to calm down. Arguing is not productive.)) Ax focused all four of his eyes on her, and they were unmoving, unblinking.

"Yeah, would you both just give it a rest?" Marco sounded as disgusted as Rachel felt.

"Marco." Jake warned. Jake was using his eerily calm I'm-just-about-ready-to-snap voice.

Marco ignored him and charged full speed ahead. "Your moralizing," he pointed at Cassie, "and your psycho-babble," he pointed at Rachel, "are going to make me throw up…which I'm probably going to do anyway."

((Marco is correct.)) Ax looked just as exhausted as the rest of them, but still managed to speak with the measured calm of an Andalite warrior. ((We need to regroup and re-strategize. Not waste time on irrelevant arguments concerning things that have already come to pass.))

Rachel didn't listen to them. She charged towards her best friend, and for the first time saw an enemy standing where her confidante used to be. "I am sick and tired of you trying to make me feel guilty for saving your life. You know what? Next time I'll let the Taxxons eat you alive while you scream, or would you rather have a Hork-Bajir blade slice your head in half? Because that's what was about to happen before I…"

((Rachel!)) The shock in Tobias's voice shamed her deeply. ((Jesus. Stop.))

She could feel them judging her, just as strongly as she could still smell the…

_Again_ she had bled for them as still she was their designated villain.

Cassie actually shoved her, and even that small explosion of violence showed her a side of her old friend she had never suspected. "Just listen to yourself. Don't you hate what you've become?" Cassie's voice was twisted, pained, ugly.

Jake stepped between the two of them, grabbing Cassie roughly and trying to maneuver her away from Rachel. "Get off me, Jake." There was a dangerous edge in Cassie's voice. She shook away his touch like it was poisonous.

"Rachel, Cassie, knock it off. We are not going to do this tonight." Jake's voice was still deadly calm and unsettling.

((Please stop this at once.)) Even Ax could no longer contain the emotion in his voice.

"I hate you." Cassie looked her straight in the eye when she said it and Rachel was shocked by how much it hurt. Her gentle, fragile friend who couldn't pass an injured animal by the side of the road without stopping to nurse it back to health. Her friend who always said "I'm sorry" when she accidentally bumped into someone, even if it hadn't been her fault. She hadn't known that Cassie's heart was capable of hatred, and knowing that she had been the one to unlock that dark part of Cassie's spirit….

((Cassie!)) Tobias roared furiously.

Marco kicked the dead stump hard enough to send bugs and dirt flying out of the holes of rotted wood. "Jesus. Is this us now? Is this what we've become?"

Jake finally snapped. "Everybody shut the hell up! Just shut up! We are not doing this tonight!" he roared.

((I will not stay here for this.)) Ax ran off, probably back to his scoop.

((Ax!)) Tobias called after him, but Ax didn't stop or look back.

Tears started streaming down Cassie's face, and Rachel struggled to hold her own in. She expected Jake to move to comfort Cassie, but he didn't. Instead he just looked around at the others and spoke; exhausted, defeated.

"Everybody just go home and…"

She knew what he had almost said. He had almost said "Go home and get some sleep," but he had choked on the words because they were so utterly ridiculous.

"Everybody just go home."

After a few seconds of standing there, hearing nothing but the howling wind and Cassie's muffled sobs, they all retreated from each other into their own private hells.

Later, everyone would apologize to everyone else. She would hug Cassie; they'd both cry and say that they hadn't meant a word of it.

So they could live with themselves.

She couldn't stand the smell of meat for months.


	12. Hey, Arnold!

"Guess what?"

"What, Jordan?" She was barely paying attention to her little sister, expecting her to just babble on about something somebody in one of her classes said.

"I have a boyfriend!"

She felt an unexpected surge of over-protectiveness.

_Don't be ridiculous, Rachel. She's only two years younger than you. Not a big deal._

"A boyfriend, huh? Seriously? What's his name?"

"Arnold."

_Arnold. Arnold the Controller? Arnold who's really a hundreds-of-years-old Chee? Arnold the secret middle-school serial killer?_

"What's Arnold's last name?"

_Have to make sure he's not one of them._

"Don't know."

"You don't know your boyfriend's last name?"

_Wait a second…what was Tobias's last name before…?_

"We've only been going out for three days."

"Three days?"

_Maybe I really shouldn't be worried._

"Duh, Rachel, that's kind of how these things work."

_How these things work? Oh God…_

"And what exactly would you know about how these things work?"

_Hopefully nothing._

"I'll bet I know more than you. The only boy I've ever seen you with is Marco, and he's way too cute for you."

"Excuse you?"

Jordan stuck her tongue out. "Marco's cute and you're a loser."

Rachel stuck her tongue out right back at Jordan. "I'll be sure to set you guys up. Maybe if I can pair off all the midgets with each other you'll leave the rest of us normal-sized people alone."

"Normal-sized? You're a giant, Rachel…like, a super-tall freak."

"Am not."

"Are too. That's why you don't have a boyfriend. Nobody wants to climb all the way up there to kiss you."

_If only height was the biggest obstacle in my relationship._

"You are such a brat. I don't even believe this Arnold kid is for real."

_But I'm about to find out._

"I have a picture!" Jordan reached triumphantly into her backpack and produced a photo. She handed it to Rachel and waited for her to act impressed. When that didn't happen, she prodded, "Cute, isn't he?"

_If you think acne and bad haircuts are cute._

"Uh, yeah, I guess so. Congrats, Jordan."

"We're going on a date tonight."

_No you're not._

"I'm telling Mom."

"Mom already knows."

_Damn._

"Where exactly is this Arnold kid taking you?"

"We're just getting dropped off at the movies."

_The movies? Sitting together in the dark, holding hands…what the hell is Mom thinking?_

"Well, I've gotta get going. Try not to be too jealous."

"Jordan, wait!"

"What?"

_If this guy tries anything, kick him in the balls._

"If this guy tries anything, kick him in the balls."

"You know I will."


	13. Fourth Night's The Charm

Three days without sleep is painful.

Not the immediate kind of pain, like touching a hot stove. It's the slow, numbing pain of an old wound. It's not an instant flash of hurt, but a constant soreness that spreads from the back of the mind and pushes its way forward.

Three days and she was seeing the world through bleary eyes that reminded her of the grizzly's, only worse. They couldn't focus for long periods, couldn't hone in on an image like they should. It was as if someone had stuck dirty contact lenses in her eyes. She knew her family was starting to notice the constant blinking, the occasional squinting.

Three days and her already volatile temper was ready to explode at the slightest annoyance. She lied to her mother for the millionth time and said she was coming down with something. There was no way she could make it through even one class like this. Hearing people talk casually, laugh with each other, annoyed her. They were happy, well-rested, well-adjusted. The world just needed to be quiet for her, needed to recognize her exhaustion and be quiet so she could sleep.

Three days and she felt separated from her own body. It was mad at her. She understood, forgave it. It needed rest, and she was denying it. She would be pissed too. She couldn't blame her muscles for needing advanced warning before they decided they wanted to move a single inch.

On what would have been the fourth sleepless night, she was curled up in bed, staring at the infomercial. She felt a surge of irrational hatred. Who _cares_ what the most efficient way to slice a cucumber is? Is this really people's _lives_?

A sleepless night wasn't unusual anymore, but this was the first time she had really battled insomnia. "Battled" was putting it generously. It had actually beaten her up, stepped over her body and done a victory dance.

Her warm, soft blanket was comforting and inviting. It enveloped her, felt wonderful against her skin. It was inviting her to sleep, to give in to the feeling of soft cotton and allow her body to completely relax.

Not gonna happen.

Tired of the cucumber bitch and her stupid slicer, she morphed eagle and flew to the meadow to see him.

She knew he hated being snuck up on, but she was too tired for delicacy. She demorphed and headed over to his tree, feeling like she needed him and wondering if it was normal to _need _your boyfriend instead of just wanting him, wondering if this was just another layer of the insanity of their lives.

She demanded that he get down from the tree and morph human. Or something like that is what she meant to say, was pretty sure she said based on his reaction, but her brain was hazy and wasn't working well with her mouth anymore.

((What is wrong with you, Rachel?))

"What do you mean, what's wrong with me? Morph human."

((You're being ridiculous. I can't talk to you when you're like this.))

"And I can't talk to _you_ when you're like _that_!" She heard her own voice pounding in her head, heard how shrill and frail it sounded. How damaged.

((Fine,)) Tobias snapped.

He flapped down from the tree branch onto the grass below him. Slowly, the image she thought of as Tobias started to emerge from underneath the red-tailed hawk.

"I just wanted to see you," she said weakly, almost like an apology.

"You _were _seeing me," he touched her hand gently but his voice remained firm. "We've been through this. I thought we were past this."

"I know, it's not that…it's just…" she searched his face, wanting to find the words she was looking for in his eyes. She knew she wasn't making sense. She could feel her skin literally crawling with exhaustion, could feel her brain wanting to rest instead of search for words, like a computer transitioning into sleep mode.

"You're really not okay, are you?" He looked scared. Was he scared for her?

"I'm losing it, Tobias." She was leaning against him, not sure if she had moved closer to him or if her body had just fallen against his. He wrapped his arms around her and it was warm, comforting, almost like the blanket.

"It's okay."

"I'm losing it." Was she crying? When had she started crying?

"We're all losing it." He pulled back, looked into her eyes that were blurrier than ever now. He touched her face, his thumb brushing one of the dark circles that had formed under her eyes. "You look exhausted."

"I haven't slept in three days."

"Oh, Rachel…" He might have had tears in his eyes, he might not have. Everything was so damn blurry now it was hard to tell.

"I'm losing it and I don't know if I can do this anymore."

He was holding her again, and she was mortified to discover that she wasn't even crying anymore. She was sobbing. _Sobbing_, like a baby would. It was an ugly word, an ugly sound, and she felt ugly and humiliated.

She was supposed to be the one telling everyone else to charge forward, and here she was admitting that she was done, ready to give up, over it, beaten.

She was going to need him to pick her up and put her back together again so she could fight another day.

"I'm crazy."

"You're not crazy. You need to get some sleep."

"I left the window open…"

He didn't even hesitate. "Let's go."

She knew he would stay with her until she fell asleep. Which she eventually did, curled up against him, the T.V. still on.

"Rachel?"

"Yeah?"

"Why are we watching this?"

"It's the VeggieMagic300…"

She faded out.


	14. Dumb Blondes

"Why did the blonde stick her head out of a moving car?"

"Marco, I swear to God…"

"To fill up!" Jake finished for him.

"I hate you both. And that's not even funny."

"Why was the blonde proud of herself?" Cassie joined in.

"Cassie! You're supposed to be on my side!"

"Because she finished the jigsaw puzzle in six months. The box said 2 to 4 years! Get it?"

"Everyone gets it." Rachel glared at her. "No one thinks dumb blonde jokes are funny."

"Everyone here except you thinks dumb blonde jokes are funny," Marco corrected her gleefully.

"Sorry, Rachel." Cassie shrugged. "How often do we get the chance to tell jokes?"

Rachel sighed. "I don't care. Dumb blonde jokes are not…"

((Why was the blonde staring at the orange juice container?)) Tobias cut her off.

"Don't start with me!" Rachel pointed threateningly towards the rafters where he was perched.

"Tell us why, Tobias!" Marco goaded. It was probably physically impossible for him to enjoy anything more than he was enjoying this moment.

((Because it said "concentrate.")) Tobias took the bait.

"That's it. I'm not saving any of your lives ever again."

((I am thoroughly confused.)) Ax broke in.

((We're just teasing Rachel, Ax.)) Tobias explained.

((Ah. I see. That does not sound wise.))


	15. The Possibilities Are Endless

"Do you believe in God?"

"I don't know. Pass the chips."

Cassie tossed the bag of chips over to her. Rachel opened them and started chowing down. They were lounging on Cassie's bed, a buffet of junk food spread out on the floor in front of them.

"It just really makes you wonder…" Cassie drifted off thoughtfully.

"What makes you wonder?" Rachel asked absent-mindedly, flipping through the channels.

"All the bizarre stuff we've seen. If you would have asked me a few years ago if aliens were real, or if it was possible for them to mount some gigantic conspiracy to secretly take over Earth, I would have told you that you were insane…or that you were Marco. Either way, I wouldn't have been on board."

Rachel laughed. "I know, right?"

Cassie sighed. "Lately, it seems like every day a new door gets opened to some even stranger aspect of the universe. And then I think, _well okay that's it then_…and then something even stranger than _that _happens. I've never really been religious, but it just makes me think that if all these things are possible that should be impossible, there has to be some kind of god or gods out there, behind it all."

Rachel stopped channel surfing and thought for a minute. "I don't know. I think I'm leaning towards no."

"Why?"

Rachel shook her head. "This war…everything in it…I just can't see God in any of that."

Cassie looked down sadly. "I guess I just like to think there's a greater purpose behind it all…makes it easier to get through."

Rachel shrugged. "You could be right. I'm not exactly the What Does It All Mean type." She tossed the chips back to Cassie. "It just is."

Cassie smiled at her friend. "I can always count on you to snap me out of it when I start playing amateur philosopher."

Rachel smiled back at her. "It's good to think about that stuff sometimes. I don't know if I would if it wasn't for you." She went back to flipping channels. "So what's it gonna be? Are we in a Television For Women mood tonight or are we in a bad horror movie mood?"


	16. Gender Bender

"Would you rather wear yellow or pink?"

As accustomed as Rachel had become to weirdness, this situation was weird _and _awkward.

Tobias was sitting on her bed and she was flipping through the hangers in her closet. That wasn't weird in and of itself, but the purpose behind this little fashion show was like something out of an incredibly bizarre horror movie.

"I don't know." Tobias shrugged uncomfortably. She knew it was genuine uneasiness about the whole situation and not just awkwardness in his human body. "And before you can ask, I'm not going to try anything on for you."

"Of course not." She tried hard to sound casual. "It won't be the full effect until you're in Taylor morph."

She was physically unable to say the word "Taylor" without hatred creeping into her voice, and she knew he noticed. Tobias was going to have to morph Taylor. That alone made her feel nervous, angry and just generally icky. The thought of Tobias acquiring Taylor disgusted her. On top of that, there was the fact that apparently the bitch she should have killed when she had the chance was leading them on with a bunch of empty promises about taking down Visser Three.

As an Animorph, she understood why they needed to at least check out what Taylor might have to offer them. As a person, she was convinced that not only was Taylor full of shit, but that this whole mission was going to end badly. And as Tobias's girlfriend, she felt like getting a prescription for Xanax.

She took the yellow tank top and the pink tank top off the hangers and held them up.

Tobias gave a non-committal sigh. "Why are we dressing me up like Barbie, again? Isn't this whole thing weird enough as it is?"

"You have to look like a believable teenage girl."

"I'll bet you never thought you'd end up saying that to your boyfriend," Tobias said with a small smirk.

Rachel nodded. "Yeah, it's just more fuel for my padded cell."

She really didn't want to go down this road with him, but the question was lingering at the tip of her tongue. Since he had already acknowledged the weirdness, she decided to test the waters.

"So," she asked gingerly, "Taylor and I would wear the same size shirt, right?"

"Uh…yeah, I think so," Tobias answered carefully.

"And the same size pants too? Same shoes?"

"Rachel, what are you getting at?"

She moved away from the closet and sat down next to him on the bed. "Do I remind you of her?"

"Do you have a prosthetic hand and Yeerk torture devices?"

"I'm serious." She hoped she wasn't pushing him too far, too deep into the memories.

"So am I." There was something harsh in his eyes, something haunted. But he spoke gently when he said "You're not her."

She nodded. It was what she wanted to hear and yet…something about it still hurt. It hurt her that Tobias would have to face Taylor again, that this evil person was still a presence in their lives, in their relationship, in her perception of herself.

"So you don't think about her when you're with me?" She knew she was starting to sound like a jealous girlfriend, but the feelings behind her sick fascination with Taylor were actually much worse, much deeper than that.

Tobias winced at her bluntness, not for the first time or the last. "I do think about her sometimes when we're together…but I don't think of you as the same person. Taylor came _this _close to killing me and _this _close to driving me insane. You saved me from going over the edge after what she did to me…more than once. Taylor is evil." He put his hand over hers. "You're good."

Hearing him say it made her come close to believing it. "I'm not who I was when this started," she said sadly.

"And I'm not the same guy who used to get his head shoved in the toilet. War changes people."

She couldn't tell him that wasn't what scared her. What scared her was wondering if maybe she hadn't changed a bit, if this was always who she was and who she would have been even if there was no war.

He brushed the hair out of her eyes, kissed her forehead. "You're good, Rachel."

She smiled and squeezed his hand. "Okay, now that we have that settled, back to real question of the hour." She gestured toward the tank tops in the closet. "Yellow or pink? Or would you rather go with a blue, maybe a red? I have tons of shirts, I just picked out those two because…"

"Rachel." He stopped her nervous rambling. He gave her his playful smile, which was rare and beautiful. "You know I don't care."

"Oh, come _on _Tobias," she continued self-mockingly. "Here I am, trying to put together a cute outfit so my boyfriend, who is about to become a teenage girl, can team up with a psycho alien double or triple agent, to take down an even _more_ evil, even _more _psycho alien. This is probably the first time in history this situation has happened, and I hope it's the last time. Let's just take a minute to bask in the _drama_ of it all."

"Well, in that case, I'll take the yellow. I think it'll really bring out my eyes."


	17. Take The Shirt Off My Back

"You look absolutely ridiculous."

"Oh come on now, you don't mean that. Unless what you mean by 'absolutely ridiculous' is 'can't keep my hands off of him.'"

Marco was wearing a T-shirt that looked like a rejected preliminary sketch from The Gap's latest line. It had some multi-colored generic Asian-looking lettering against a black backdrop. The letters were arranged in an ugly and bizarre way that would have made them hard to decipher even if you knew what they meant.

She was one hundred percent sure he didn't know what the hell the letters meant, and she was one thousand percent sure he would tell this girl that they meant something like Peace For All Mankind or Beauty All Around Us.

He had chosen to pair this gem with khakis that weren't heinous in and of themselves, but only served to make the shirt more noticeable.

"That outfit just screams 'douchebag.'"

"I beg to differ."

"And you already scream 'douchebag,' so I don't think you needed any help."

He winked at her. "Jealousy is so sad. That's why I'm here. To help you move past your issues. I think you'll find that admitting I'm awesome is the first step to recovery."

They were playing the same little game of one-upmanship they always played.

She hit the ball back into his court. "And why _are_ you here, Marco?"

"I just wanted to get your fashion advice."

She didn't believe him for a second. Wearing that shirt in front of her was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Showing up at her house and knocking on her bedroom door had felt like a dare.

"So who's the unlucky lady?"

He grinned salaciously at her. "Melanie Hatherton."

She needed a second to absorb that. "Melanie Hatherton?" she repeated, her face twisted into an expression of disbelief.

"Yeah. Melanie Hatherton," Marco bragged.

Rachel threw her head back and laughed.

"What?" Marco demanded.

"Marco, that's nothing to brag about. She's an idiot."

"A hot idiot."

She meant to grimace, but found herself smiling at that. "You really don't have any shame, do you?"

"Not a teeny, tiny ounce of it."

She laughed. "Well, at least change the shirt. The khakis are acceptable, but that shirt has got to go."

"I spent good money on this shirt." He was still feigning innocence.

"Well, get your money back," she retorted. "You look like you're trying too hard to be hip or something."

She ran her hand along the lettering, and there was a small moment of electricity between them. Nothing earth-shattering, just an answer to a question neither one of them was going to ask.

"What does this even mean, anyway?"

He didn't miss a beat. "It means Girls Named Rachel Are Always Crazy."

She didn't miss a beat either. "Are you sure it doesn't mean You Must Be At Least This Tall To Wear This Shirt?"

He shook his head. "Whatever. Opinion heard. Opinion ignored."

She cocked an eyebrow at him. "I thought you came for my fashion advice."

He only faltered for a second, and recovered so quickly he probably thought she didn't pick up on it. "Turns out I didn't really want fashion advice. Turns out I just wanted to get my ego stroked, and you're not really doing much in that department, so I'll be on my way to sweet, sweet Melanie."

Marco was almost out the door when it hit her, and she was a little ashamed she hadn't brought it up right away.

"Marco wait, do we know she's not…"

"She's not." He was suddenly serious. "We've already been watching her."

"We have?" She was a little irritated at being left out of the loop. "Who's 'we'?"

"Ax and Tobias helped me out."

"Tobias didn't say anything about…"

"Because it's not a big thing," he interrupted. "She didn't go anywhere near any known entrances. She's clean." He paused. "Worried about me?"

Rachel didn't give herself time to consider that the answer might be _yes _before shooting back with "Please. I'm more worried about any girl who would agree to go out with you."

"Whatever. See you later, Rachel," he said mock-cheerfully.

"You might have to read the menu for her," she called after him as he walked out of her room.

"See you later, bitch," he called back without changing his tone.


	18. Without Her Animals

Technically she could say that she wasn't a violent person.

Most of her acts of violence had been committed not by her own hands, but by enormous paws, razor-sharp talons, gleaming fangs. Weapons of the animal kingdom.

Morphing was such a gift.

It wasn't just the anonymity it provided them, or the ability to fight enemies that would kill human bodies as easily as humans stepped on ants.

Morphing was also a smokescreen, a mask to hide behind. Animal eyes were a veil obscuring the view of the overwhelming violence.

Looking at herself in the bathroom mirror, she knew how much worse it could be. How much she needed the animals.

What would her face, her body, her mind have become if she didn't have the animals to protect her?

She looked at her fragile, human body in the mirror and thought of all the battles. Saw skin become nothing more than scar tissue. Saw her ears torn off, arms and legs missing. Her eyes gouged out. Saw the buckets of blood pour out of her onto the floor, enough blood to flood the bathroom, to flood the house, so much more than the human body could even hold.

She couldn't survive like that, of course. And if by some magic she could, she wouldn't want to.

But all that and more had already happened to her body, and here she was, all put back together again. Blood back in veins, eyes stuck back into sockets, arms and legs sewn back on like a rag doll.

There weren't even any scars.

Without the animals, she would be wringing blood out of her hair instead of water. She saw it now, in the mirror, the red mixing with the blonde and then separating from it, swirling down the sink.

Without the animals she would be stuck in an endless cycle of cleaning up the blood, all of her clothes stained red. She would have to dump it out of her shoes, scrub it off her hands, rinse the taste out of her mouth.

She wrung the water out of her hair and thought of all the Controllers she had killed. Hork-Bajirs, Taxxons, other creatures who hadn't even existed in her fantasies or nightmares before the war.

There had been humans too.

And she had to give thanks to the grizzly, the lion, the elephant, to all her animals. She really wasn't sure if she could have done it without them. Even looking into her own eyes and seeing the damaged soul behind them, she didn't know if the human girl in the mirror was capable of those killings.

She didn't know if she could actually use her hands to kill another person. Didn't know if she could look them in the eye with her clear, unobstructed human vision and watch them die.

The animals did it for her.

But there might come a day when…

No.

She was not a violent person.


	19. I'm A Dead Man Walking

She found him on the edge of the Hork-Bajir camp, staring blankly into a small stream.

"What's up?" he asked, not looking up from the water.

She just sat down beside him and didn't say anything for a minute. Then she started in, struggling to find the right words. "Look, I know your parents…I know how hard that was for you. I know you blame yourself. But this isn't over yet. We can still save them. You have to let it go, try to forget about them if you have to, because we need you. We need you and we do not have time for…"

"I'm not going to be able to save him." The sound of his voice was a bit jarring. Words from Jake were few and far between these days.

She knew who he was talking about. "Tom?" she asked softly.

He raised his eyes to look in hers. "Yeah. Tom. I've been taking a page from Marco's playbook. I've gone through every scenario, every endgame, every possible plan." His voice weakened, trailed off into the wind. "I mean…there's just…we just aren't going to be able to."

Jake was clutching a fistful of the grass at his feet. He yanked the bundle up by the roots and let it fall out of his hand like he didn't even notice. Rachel thought for a moment that he might punch her, just because she was the only other person there and she knew from experience that once you reach a certain level of anger, it can't stay inside.

Instead he just kept talking. "I've been fantasizing about saving him for _three years_…stupid fantasies, where I'm the big hero, where we run to each other and hug, where he cries and thanks me for saving him from hell…three years of fantasies…and we have to kill him."

"Jake…"

But he wasn't going to stop now. "Have you ever wanted something so much, fantasized about it so much that the fantasy becomes part of who you are, and then all of a sudden you realize that it can't happen…not in this lifetime, anyway?"

So many things raced through her mind. So many fantasies that she had already let go of, but that she could recall in a second, like pulling a comfy old sweater out of the back of her closet.

Her family sitting around the dinner table. Her mom, her dad, Jordan, Sarah and her. All of them laughing, happily sharing stories from their day. Her parents holding hands and looking lovingly into each other's eyes.

Her mother still being proud of her. Having enough time to keep getting straight A's and awards in gymnastics. Being able to actually live her teenage years instead of stumbling through them like a blur until she could get back to the fight.

Living with Tobias. Somehow he's able to live as a human and still transform into a hawk. They don't have to set clocks or stopwatches. They can spend the day together and he can stay through the night. They can still grow wings and catch thermals together.

She hadn't quite given up on that last one. It was fading, but it wasn't gone.

"Of course I have." She tried to keep her voice calm and measured to balanced out Jake's raw emotion. "Tom…the _real_ Tom…he's proud of you, now that he knows who you really are. He has to be. I know it." She touched his shoulder quickly and gently, like she was testing the temperature of bubbling water. "He won't be mad at you."

Jake didn't really react. Whatever she had hoped to get out of him wasn't going to come. They only sat there in silence for a few minutes, but it felt like hours. When he spoke again, his voice had regained its control.

"When I have to…"

"When _I _have to," she interrupted. Her voice didn't waver. It wasn't an offer, wasn't a question, wasn't a plea. Just a statement of fact.

Jake looked so ashamed, like his clothes had suddenly vanished and she had seen him naked. Rachel regarded him carefully. He didn't think she knew? Was he really going to start underestimating her? Now?

"I know it has to be me," she said without an ounce of self-pity.

Jake shook his head. "He's my brother. I should be the one who…"

She held up a hand and cut him off. She wasn't going to let him get away with that. "We are so far past 'should be.' We moved on from 'should be' to 'have to' when we went on the run." And just in case he thought she was still interested in bullshitting, she added, "And you know it."

"Yeah, I know," he admitted, nodding.

After a few more endless minutes of silence she asked, "So what's the plan?"

"What?" He was absent again, back to staring into the water. There, but not really there.

"What's the plan?" she repeated, punctuating every word. She wasn't going to let him off the hook, not even a little bit. She was willing to play the assassin, and he was going to keep playing his part as the leader. It was only fair, and she kind of felt like he owed her that.

"Look," she continued, "we need a plan, okay? And you have to come up with it. And since I'm kind of an important player here, you just let me know what the plan is as soon as you're done staring at your own reflection."

She started to get up to leave, but he grabbed her arm and stopped her. "I might not be able to save you either."

She sunk back into the grass. The fantasy of living through this war. It was a powerful one. It wasn't going to be easy to let it go.

And the truth was, death scared her. Not the act of being killed. She had already danced on the edge of that so many times. No, it was the _dead_ part that scared her. The finality of it, the uncertainty. It had always been easier for her to deal with demons that were out in the open than ones that hid in the shadows.

What would it be like? It was too big, too uncertain to even wrap her brain around. Punishment? Reward? Heaven? Hell? Floating on a cloud, watching other people live all the lives you could have lived yourself? Rotting in the dirt, feeling your flesh decay down to a pile of old bones?

She didn't like asking those questions and she was not ready to know the answers.

She felt like quoting David, and she suddenly felt a strange connection to him. _It's a beautiful world. I'll miss it._

What she said instead was "Well, luckily for you, I'm not really the kind of girl who needs saving."

The silence was painful. She was the one who broke it after a minute or an hour. "Tobias will try to stop me. You might want to consider that. When you come up with whatever plan you're going to come up with to get me to Tom."

"I know. He loves you."

Rachel got up to leave. This time she had already stood up and taken the first few steps back towards camp when Jake said, "I love you too."

She was stunned. They didn't come from an "I love you" kind of family. They came from the kind of family where most things are implied and not spoken out loud.

She stopped walking, but didn't turn around to face him.

"But I won't let him stop you."

"I know." She hesitated. "I love you too."


	20. Monsters

"I can't sleep."

Sarah was standing in the doorway to her bedroom. Rachel hadn't even realized that she had left it open.

"Come on in."

Sarah stepped gingerly into the bedroom, well aware that walking into your older sister's bedroom was usually a punishable offense. She closed the door behind her.

"What's up?" Rachel was concerned by the look in Sarah's eyes.

"I had a nightmare." Rachel knew that it was normal for little girls to have nightmares. But she wanted all the nightmares in this house to belong to her. She was the only one who had earned them, and they belonged with their rightful owner.

"Do you want to hang out with me for a little while? Until you feel like you can go back to sleep?"

Sarah nodded.

"Well, okay then, come on." Rachel patted the empty space next to her on the bed.

Sarah plopped down beside her older sister.

"So what was this nightmare about?" Rachel asked gently.

"A monster," Sarah answered simply.

"Oh yeah? What kind of monster?"

"A terrible one. He was huge and mean and he kept chasing me around trying to eat me."

Rachel put her arm around Sarah. "No monsters are going to be eating you. I'll make sure of it."

"You don't believe in monsters, do you?" Sarah asked, sounding like she was undecided on the topic.

Rachel almost told her that no, there was no such thing as monsters. But her little sister looked so vulnerable, so trusting. She couldn't lie to her.

She looked Sarah in the eye, feeling a surge of protectiveness and a wave of love. "It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if they're in your dreams or standing right in front of your face. Because you're stronger than them, and you're always going to beat them."

Sarah smiled. "I'm stronger than them," she repeated, gaining confidence.

"Yeah," Rachel nodded, "always."

"Thanks, Rachel."

"Anytime."

They sat there together for a little while, blonde heads leaning against each other, blue eyes staring into space.


	21. Funeral

One good, hard blow and this would all be over.

Just one blow to his rat skull and David wouldn't be a problem anymore. They wouldn't have to worry about the damage he could cause with what he knew. They wouldn't have to worry about him somehow, against all odds, sneaking back into their lives. They wouldn't have to worry.

But she would. She would always have to worry. The nightmares would never go away, and she knew she couldn't end them with just one blow.

She stood up and wiped the tears on her sleeve. No more crying. She was getting angry now. Good. She needed the rage to boil away the sadness. Where were the others? Here to lend their support? Here to help her? No, of course not. They needed David gone; no not gone, they needed him _dead_, and here she was to take care of it alone.

He was still staring up at her with beady rat eyes that couldn't show emotion.

((What are you doing? Toying with me? Typical Rachel.))

"Don't talk like you know me!" she exploded. As loud as her voice was, it didn't contain a shred of confidence. She sounded like a skittish little girl yelling at a schoolyard bully.

((Just do it, okay Rachel? I'm ready. Do it.)) His voice was calm, serene. Almost like a prayer. She had never heard him like this before and she didn't want to. Not now. She wanted him to rage and threaten with the unhinged anger she had seen in him before.

She wanted this to be a fight, not an execution. She didn't need peaceful, accepting David right now. She needed the David who reminded her of all the worst things about herself. The David who held up a mirror to the ugliness inside her until she hated them both so much she just wanted to take a rock and…

No. She sat down suddenly in the filth next to him, clutching dirty leaves and mud underneath her fingernails. She couldn't do it. Unless…

"How did _you _do it, David?" Her voice wavered only slightly, but she was digging her hands into the wet ground now, her knuckles turning white.

((What do you mean?))

"Don't play stupid. How'd you kill Saddler?"

Silence. She wasn't expecting an answer anyway. She was just going to have to…

((I suffocated him.))

She had always known, they had all known, yet the words still shocked her.

((I snuck into his hospital room in fly morph. Then I demorphed, took a pillow and smothered him. He was a weak kid, but he still fought. It wasn't easy like I thought it would be. As sick as he was, I think he still wanted to live. You won't believe this, but I didn't enjoy watching him struggle until it was over. It wasn't like I had pictured it. It wasn't clean, wasn't quick, wasn't easy. But it was necessary. It was him or me and…))

She shook her head, trying to shake away the image of Saddler struggling, crying, dying alone and terrified in that hospital bed. "You're lying. He was already dead when you got there. You just want me to kill you and you're trying to …"

((Provoke you? I thought that was why you asked me.))

She kept staring into the unfeeling rat eyes. It was pointless. The rat eyes couldn't be anything other than soulless, couldn't reveal the humanity behind them. She knew this and she couldn't look away.

((End this, Rachel. You'll be killing someone who already feels dead.))

She propped herself up on her knees, shaking. Once she had steadied herself, she reached for a jagged rock. She took a deep breath and raised it above David's tiny rat body. She waited for his fight or flight response to kick in. Waited for him to decide at the last minute that he needed to cling to whatever semblance of a life he had left.

He didn't move a muscle.

She turned away for a minute. Then, in one swift movement, she turned her whole body towards him, closed her eyes and brought the rock down hard where she knew his head was.

There was a crunching sound and a mild squeak. She heard a human scream. She didn't know if she had screamed out loud when she slammed the rock down, or if the screaming in her head was so loud that it had somehow escaped from her skull.

She opened her eyes, fresh tears pouring out of them. She tried to wipe them away and they mixed with the mud on her hands.

David was right. It wasn't clean, wasn't quick, wasn't easy. The rat body still gave a few involuntary twitches before it remained still forever. She looked at the rock in her hand and choked back vomit. There was blood and fur and…something she didn't quite recognize. She tossed the rock into the water. She wiped the smattering of blood on her own hand onto the ground next to her, not worried at all about the filth, just wanting to get the blood off.

This wasn't what she expected to feel. She was starting to buy into the image of Rachel the Warrior, Rachel the Killer. She was starting to envision herself that way. But she didn't feel an ounce of joy, an ounce of victory after killing David. There was no adrenaline rush, just a deflating feeling of emptiness. Killing wasn't easy, wasn't fun, wasn't an excuse for her to play warrior princess. It was messy and ugly and painful and so frighteningly _real_.

She buried the body. She didn't want to leave him to the vultures. Even knowing who he had been, all that he had done and tried to do, she could not leave his body exposed like that; a mashed rat on a filthy beach.

So she buried him gently, clawing out a little hole and covering the body with leaves, then sealing the tiny tomb with another layer of mud.

As the weather started to soften, the sun broke out from behind the clouds, the breeze slowed to a comfortable pace, and the fresh air brought with it a sense of renewal.

As the beach came back to life, she had a funeral for the David she had killed, and for the people that they both used to be.


	22. Smoke Break

It had been awhile, and Naomi had to admit that it felt pretty good.

She was proud of herself for whittling what used to be a pack-a-day habit down to the occasional sneaked cigarette. Some might say that she hadn't really quit. Well, this was her version of quitting and she was still proud of it, perfectionists be damned.

She used to be able to sneak out back when she knew the girls were asleep. Now there was no more sneaking. There was no more out back. There were just a few private moments away from the refugee camp. She knew how closely everyone was watching her. She saw the glances, caught the whispers. A lawyer through and through, subtleties didn't escape her easily.

Apparently trying to run away makes people distrust you. Who would have ever guessed?

Naomi took the cigarettes and lighter out of her jacket pocket, lit one up and took a long drag. Just like always, it felt amazing. The warmth of the smoke filling her lungs, taking the deep breath she had needed ever since finding out that the world was crumbling and her daughter was one of the only people keeping it from complete destruction. Naomi smiled her private smile that very few people ever got to see, the one that made her face seem to instantly lose twenty years.

"Mom."

Naomi jumped about a foot in the air.

"Relax, Mom. Just came to check on you."

"Rachel! I…uh…" Naomi fumbled for a minute, simultaneously trying to explain the cigarette and realizing how stupid hiding a cigarette was during times like these. She shoved the remaining cigarettes and the lighter back into her jacket, but didn't put out the one in her hand.

"I thought you quit."

Rachel joined her mother on the edge of the hill, standing there awkwardly and watching the stars stare back at them.

Naomi shrugged, giving up the act. There was no room, no time for acting anymore. There was only room for the kind of honesty that terrified her, especially when it came to her daughters. "I guess old habits die hard."

"Yeah, I guess so," Rachel said quietly. Naomi could feel her daughter reaching for words, wanting to say something but holding herself back.

"Did they send you out here to check up on me? Make sure I didn't make another break for it?" Naomi was disappointed but not surprised to hear herself sounding like a lawyer questioning a witness.

"Just thought I'd keep you company."

Naomi smiled at the way Rachel skillfully avoided answering the question. Looking at her oldest daughter's face in the moonlight, she saw age lines where there should have been nothing but youthful skin. She knew it was a trick of the light, but it hurt her heart just the same. The logical part of Naomi, the part she was relying on to keep her sanity right now, knew how much of a toll this war must have taken on Rachel. The part of her that was a mother wanting to keep her daughter safe was badly wounded and couldn't be healed by the logic of it all.

She wanted to tell Rachel how absolutely and completely proud she was of her. But it just felt like too much right then, felt like if she released all of that emotion she wouldn't be able to stop it from pouring out of her. It would send her back to the edge. Back to running away.

"You want a cigarette?" Offering her daughter this window into one of her most personal escapes was as far as Naomi could take it right now.

Rachel laughed at first, then stopped laughing when she saw Naomi reach into her jacket pocket, take out the packet of cigarettes, remove one and hold it out to her. Naomi expected her to reject the offer, but Rachel took the cigarette. The way she held it delicately between her fingers reminded Naomi of holding Rachel's tiny hand as they crossed the street to go to the playground.

A million years ago.

"Give me a light?" Rachel asked.

Naomi got out the lighter and lit the cigarette as Rachel held it in her mouth. Rachel inhaled quickly and immediately exploded into a fit of coughing.

Now Naomi laughed. "Really? After all you've been through, you've never had a cigarette?"

Rachel gave her mother a sad smile. "My vices are way worse than this."

Naomi felt another pang of regret for her daughter's lost childhood.

"Well, you're doing it wrong. Get a little bit of smoke in your mouth first and then fully inhale with your lungs. Get used to the smoke hitting the back of your throat." Naomi demonstrated.

Rachel tried to follow suit, still coughing, but not as severely this time.

"You know," Naomi said, "don't suffer on my account. You can just put it out."

"Nah, it's okay. I won't waste it. It looks like you don't have very many left and, well, who knows when you'll be able to get more?"

"Yeah. Who knows?" Naomi looked into Rachel's eyes and saw more hesitation, more things unsaid that threatened to widen the already large distance between them.

"Mom," Rachel's voice was firm, "I need to know that you won't try to run away again."

"Rachel," Naomi started, "Don't worry about that. You can go back and tell them…"

"Not them," Rachel interrupted. "Me. _I _need to know that you won't run away again. I can't…I can't do this and worry about you running."

Rachel bit her bottom lip. A nervous gesture that reminded Naomi so much of herself.

"I'm sorry," Naomi blurted out before she could stop herself.

Rachel looked surprised. "Sorry for what?"

Naomi swallowed hard, bit her lip and furrowed her brow trying to keep tears from coming. "I know I haven't always been there for you girls like I should have. I know there have always been late night meetings and conferences. I'm sorry for the things I missed."

Rachel took another drag from her cigarette, smoother this time and without coughing, but still uncomfortable with it. Then she said, "Look, you were willing to stand up to me in elephant morph when you thought I was going to hurt Jordan and Sarah. You attacked a _bear_ with a _spice rack _to try and protect your daughters. I think it's okay if you missed a few soccer games."

Naomi felt overwhelmed again. There was so much she wanted to say to her daughter, so much to account for and explain and ammend. But she knew their time was almost up, knew this war was about to explode into a parade of non-stop violence that wouldn't leave room for human emotion.

She wished an impossible wish: That she could say everything she'd ever wanted to say to Rachel in the time it takes to smoke a cigarette.

"I won't run again, honey. I promise." Naomi took a long drag.

"Thank you." Rachel smiled the first genuine, warm smile Naomi had seen on her daughter's face since they'd been at camp.

"So did I just give you a lifelong bad habit?" Naomi asked.

"Nah," Rachel said, still smiling, "I don't know if smoking's my thing. Besides, there's no such thing as a bad habit when you can morph everything away."

Naomi cocked an eyebrow. "So that would mean...tattoos?"

Rachel grinned. "I've gotten a million of them Mom. And you'd never know it."

"Really?"

Rachel shrugged. "I said you'd never know it."

They shared a sarcastic smile.

"And thank you for sharing one of your last cigarrettes with me."

"Who else would I share it with?"


	23. Best Years Of Our Lives

"Yeah, it was totally awesome. But it wasn't all up to me. Definitely not. Basketball is a team sport. I couldn't have done it without my teammates."

"Yeah, there are usually teammates on teams," Rachel muttered dismissively. She had to remind herself not to grind her teeth while she listened to her second-cousin Alex drone on and on about making the winning shot in the big game. She had the misfortune of sitting next to him at yet another boring family reunion, meant to celebrate yet another holiday which was losing its meaning for her.

Hearing him brag annoyed her.

Hearing him brag and try to disguise it as modesty made her wish she was in fly morph, doing a reconnaissance mission in a pile of puke.

She looked across the table at Jake. Before the war, she wouldn't have been able to tell that he wanted nothing more than to throttle Alex. Now she picked up on the way his eyes would darken for just a second whenever Alex would not-so-subtly elude to the fact that Jake used to be a contender for the basketball team.

Funny how she felt like she didn't know Jake anymore; the way he had learned to skillfully manipulate people without them ever realizing it, the way he could deliver an Oscar-caliber performance at a family reunion. But she still knew him better than anyone else in the room.

She also knew that the smile on Jake's face right now was frighteningly fake, almost like it was painted on. As much as they needed to keep their cover, it unnerved her that no one else seemed to notice how hard he was struggling under the weight of having his lost dreams thrown in his face by someone who liked to use him as an ego boost.

Even though the world literally depended on their little act, deep down, it disappointed Rachel sometimes how no one saw through it.

"That's right, son," Alex's dad, Ryan, patted his pride and joy on the back. "It is a team sport, and every member of a team is valuable. There's no I in team. Not everyone can be the starting center. Not everyone can make the winning shot."

Rachel rolled her eyes at Jordan, who was sitting next to Jake. They had already shared plenty of laughs over how obnoxious Alex and Ryan always were about the whole "sports star" thing, and it looked like this reunion wasn't going to be any different.

"Jake _was _going to go out for the team," Tom broke in. Rachel took a deep breath and a sip of her soda. Tom's Yeerk getting involved in this conversation was going to require Jake to put on a performance on top of a performance.

"But he just lost motivation, I guess, right little brother? What _are _you up to these days, anyway? No interest in The Sharing, no interest in sports, in school, what gives, bro?"

Jake shrugged, the fake smile still painted on. "I guess I just don't have a lot going on these days."

"Really, Jake?" his mother Jean asked. "You used to be so into basketball. You're not thinking about going out for the team next time around?"

It annoyed Rachel how Jean sounded like she was grasping at straws, trying to think of something that _maybe_ her formerly enthusiastic son was up to these days besides avoiding everyone and acting mysterious. It reminded her of how her mother got on her case about joining gymnastics again. Here she was, here Jake was, here _they_ were, saving the world and…

"Oh, come on Jake, tell them!" Rachel broke in suddenly.

"Tell us what?" Tom asked curiously.

"Yeah, Rachel, tell us what?" Jake kept his face and voice neutral, but his eyes were panicked.

"About leadership club, silly!" _Leadership club? Silly?_ God, she should have come up with a good lie in her head before she tried to stand up for Jake. Jake looked like he was thinking the same thing.

"Leadership club?" Jean sounded hopeful.

"Is this club like The Sharing? Because I've been trying to get midget here," Tom gestured in Jake's direction with his fork, "to join The Sharing forever. And now you go and join some stupid leadership club?"

Rachel looked the Yeerk in the eye and tried to think on her feet. Coming up with convincing lies on the spot wasn't one of her strong suits, and she kind of wished Marco or Cassie were there to help bail her out. But they weren't and she just kept charging forward.

"It's kind of like The Sharing," she nodded at Tom, "but it's still pretty new and it's not very big yet, so most people haven't heard of it. It's a club for future leaders and Jake got elected president."

"You did?" Jean asked encouragingly.

"Yeah, I guess I did." Jake relaxed slightly, but he still looked concerned.

"Good job, midget," Tom said unconvincingly. "I guess that's pretty cool."

"Yeah, it is." Rachel shot Alex a smug look. He didn't seem to notice.

Jake gave her a small, quick smile from across the table.

* * *

She found Jake later, sitting outside by himself on top of an old picnic table. She sat down next to him.

"You shouldn't have said anything back there," he said, half-scolding and half-pleading. "You can't take risks like that. Not in front of Tom." He shook his head. "Not at all."

"You're welcome for standing up for you," Rachel snapped.

Jake gave a sad little half-laugh. "Thanks, but I don't need you to stand up for me. Now, later, I'm going to have to explain to my parents why I never talk about leadership club and why I quit yet another thing. I just need you…" He paused and took a deep breath. "I just need us all to keep our cover."

Rachel rolled her eyes. "I just don't understand how you can let some douchebag make you feel like a loser while you're saving the world."

Jake sighed and she could see him transitioning into Fearless Leader mode. "It doesn't matter that Alex is a douchebag. It doesn't matter that he's living the life I used to fantasize about living. Because I don't fantasize about stuff like being a basketball star anymore now that we have more important things to worry about. Alex will probably become a loser and we'll go down in the history books."

She shot Jake a skeptical look. "You don't really mean that, do you?"

"No," he admitted bitterly, "No, I don't. I hate that the biggest douche in the history of douches is living my childhood fantasy when I'm not even having a childhood because I'm busy probably leading us all to our deaths, while I get to look like a loser with nothing going on. I'm not thinking about making it into any history books, because I'm going too crazy thinking about today to think about the future. And today Alex is cool, I'm a loser, and that makes me feel like shit."

He gave a "what more do you want from me" shrug.

They sat there for a minute, and Rachel thought about how disappointed she was the day she had to quit gymnastics. She thought about the look on her mother's face when her grades started dropping, the look in Jordan's eyes when she hadn't had time to help her little sister pick out a cute outfit for her first school dance. It embarrassed her to be hurt over missing her teenage years when she knew her only focus should be fighting the Yeerks.

"Jake?"

"Yeah, Rachel?"

"Our lives suck, don't they?"

Jake nodded solemnly. "They suck really, really hard. And I do appreciate what you tried to do back there."

"No problem." Her tone brightened. "Hey, I think I saw Alex pull up in the new car his dad got him for his sixteenth birthday. You wanna morph birds and shit on it?"

"Rachel," he protested weakly, "we can't…I mean it's…that would be…yeah, let's do it."


	24. Birthday Presents

Waking up one day and realizing you don't know your own children anymore is a terrifying thing.

Dan is no stranger to terrifying mornings. Never quite venturing over the blurry line from overzealous casual drinker to alcoholic, there are still mornings when he struggles to remember why his apartment suddenly looks like a messy college dorm room again. Not allowing himself to get involved in another serious relationship, old wounds from Naomi still running too deep to mend, there are even mornings when he wakes up with someone next to him and frantically racks his brain trying to remember her name.

But this morning Dan is terrified because it's Jordan's thirteenth birthday. His first thought is to get her a Barbie doll. Then he remembers that she hasn't played with Barbie dolls in years. That would probably be a better gift for Sara.

He starts trying to think about what Jordan _is _playing with these days. Do thirteen year olds _play_ anymore? He still thinks of her as the little girl that she was during the divorce.

Getting out of bed, making his way to the bathroom and looking at himself in the mirror, Dan shakes his head at how stuck he has allowed himself to become after the divorce. The man in the mirror has aged. He can't deny that, even though his vanity desperately wants to. The extra grey hairs, what he swears could be crow's feet…no, those parts of him haven't had the decency to stay stuck in time.

But the man who had been Naomi's husband and a father to his girls still stares back at him. He wants this version of himself to go ahead and fall off like a scab, so he can move on and become a healed man. But both men continue to exist in his head, mocking each other.

The old Dan mocks how the new Dan is still a father, but not really a parent. How he sometimes pretends to forget visits and phone calls, even though he never forgets, just because his own imagined and real failures keep him convinced that maybe he was never the parenting type.

How he still loves Naomi. He's not in love with her, hasn't been in love with her since years before the divorce. But there will always be a connection there, a bond formed through their girls and the life they tried to build together. A bond that's been permanently damaged, but can't be completely broken no matter how hard they hack away at it.

The new Dan mocks how the old Dan couldn't even end things with style. He could have had an affair, maybe with a younger woman. Gone out in a blaze of bad decisions. Then at least he could have been the star of a story to tell in the bars. Better to be the star and a bad guy than just another guy who couldn't make his marriage work. Better to have seriously fucked up and at least be able to pinpoint the exact moment when his relationship was over.

The truth was, things with Naomi just faded out. There were no affairs, no money problems, no huge explosive fights. Just a slow fading out of the love they used to have until they both ended up sleepwalking through their marriage. The divorce was like waking up, but honestly, things would have been easier in a lot of ways if they had both agreed to just stay asleep.

Still half asleep now, brushing his teeth and getting ready to turn on the shower, it hits Dan hard that he doesn't know his own daughters any better than he knows some of his co-workers, and that he can come up with a list of the best places in town to grab a beer and a burger much more easily than he can come up with a list of things that Jordan might want for her birthday.


	25. Similar Creatures

It's not a difficult hunt.

Last time she tried morphing into a cat and knocking the mouse out. She ended up accidentally killing it altogether, and she knows it's not the same if the mouse is already dead.

This time, all it takes is a small piece of bacon and the mouse is all hers. She almost feels bad for the little guy as he scampers towards the cage. He just wanted dinner, and now he's dinner for someone else. She lets him chow down on his free bacon, unaware that this cage spells his doom. He's actually kind of a cute mouse.

Oh well. That's nature. She can't think about fair or unfair. Some things just need to die so other things can live.

On her way to the meadow, cage in hand, she passes a dead bird. The body looks like it's already become a meal for another creature. She shakes her head at the mess of feathers and guts and thinks of Tobias. The mouse makes her think of him too, getting restless in its cage, itching to break free.

These are the kinds of things that make her think of her boyfriend; road kill and caged animals.

As much as she isn't a flowers and candy kind of romantic, as much as those kinds of clichés make her roll her eyes, there are times when she resents their strange brand of romance. Times when she feels trapped by it, lost in the uncloseable gap between the life she wants with him and the life they will always have.

Whenever other hawks try to invade his territory, she'll bring him extra food. Bringing him human food is a present for both of them. She knows he's grateful and a little embarrassed by the gesture, but she has to admit she enjoys how he has to morph human to share the meal with her.

Bringing him the mouse will be a present just for him. He'll be able to forgo a dangerous hunt, but he'll be able to remain in the hawk body.

The longer the war goes on, the more she wonders if he would ever inhabit his human body anymore if it wasn't for her. She's watched him transform from a boy trapped in a hawk's body into a hawk with the soul of a human.

She asks him when she gets to the meadow. She already knows the answer, but for maybe the same reason that she can't imagine her life without the pain of loving him, she wants to hear it.

((I don't know.))

It's a kind lie, and she's grateful and a little embarrassed by the gesture, understanding how Tobias feels as he rips into the mouse.

She watches him enjoy his meal, looks at the bloody mess right in front of her face, her love letter composed of a corpse. She's glad that she is able to give him what he needs, even though doing so costs her the last shred of fantasy in which this relationship is as normal, as easy as a predator devouring its prey.

She knows the hawk can never belong to her, but she wants them to belong together, wants to make it all fit. But the whole of who he is can't be divided neatly, evenly down the middle. There may have been a time, before she loved him, when the human could have survived without the hawk.

But she knows now that that time has long since passed.

Later, he becomes human again, and she knows it is only because he wants to make her happy. Even holding him, touching him, she feels twinges of guilt because she knows this is a gift just for her. Flying together is a present for both of them, but Tobias taking his human form is just for her. And guilty as she is, she's also glad to have him back, even if the person next to her is just the ghost of a boy who once lived and moved on to become something else entirely.

Sometimes she just has to laugh quietly at herself, shake her head at how selfish it is to expect him to be capable of sharing every part of himself with her. She really loves him, but there are parts of her that she can barely begin to acknowledge to herself, let alone share with another person. She knows he wants the girl and not the warrior, just like she wants the human and not the hawk.

But she knows that the time when the girl could have survived without the warrior has long since passed.

She really just wishes that they could both...

But she can't think about fair or unfair. This is the only version of being in love she's ever known; similar creatures damaged in ways that fuse them together like a broken bone healing.

Maybe some desires just have to die so more realistic ones can live.


	26. Three Square Meals, Four Long Days

Sometimes it's really kind of an honor to suck at something.

This is what she was thinking as she surveyed the mess in front of her, mentally re-tracing the steps she had tried to follow and wondering when she had taken a wrong turn.

Her mom was out of town for a conference. After a few long, boring speeches about responsibility and family, she had been entrusted with the care of Jordan and Sara for four days. Her mother had left some money for them to use. The problem was, she hadn't left enough money for them to order pizza and take-out every single day, for every single meal.

This led to the unavoidable tragedy of Rachel cooking.

She was very careful not to attempt anything ambitious. She even stayed away from the oven and limited herself to stovetops and microwaves. She took every precaution that novice cooks should take to ensure that they don't overreach their skill level and butcher a meal. She followed instructions on boxes to the letter and stuck strictly to the most basic, idiot-proof meal ideas.

This time it was breakfast. Sausage, pancakes, eggs.

So what was the problem, she asked herself as she tasted her burnt sausage, burnt pancakes and too-runny eggs? As she struggled through these first bites, the answer came to her.

She just sucked really hard at cooking. Like, so hard she was starting to justify it as an accomplishment. She wasn't just an okay cook, just a bad cook. That was for wimps. She had the courage, the skill to suck the worst.

She smiled to herself. Yeah, that was it. That was how she was going to spin it in her mind so she didn't have to feel embarrassment at her inability to complete this basic household task. If you're talented at something, you don't have to work very hard at it. And she didn't have to work hard at all to make food taste crappy. So, actually, she was a very talented chef.

Jordan and Sara both had expressions of cautious optimism on their faces when they came down for breakfast. The hope that maybe it would be better this time. When they saw the food Rachel had laid on the table, they exchanged weary glances.

"Rachel?" Sara asked, her eyes wide and pleading, "Can we please order pizza?"

"I already told you, we don't have much pizza money left. Now, eat your eggs. They're getting cold."

Jordan looked at Rachel with amazement. "Why would it matter if they got cold?"

Rachel smiled. Even though she didn't make crappy food intentionally, making her sisters eat it was satisfying passive-aggressive revenge for their backtalk and whining while their mom was away. And pretending that she didn't realize how bad the food was, playing innocent and making them feel too guilty _not _to eat it?

Priceless.

"Come on you two," she said, still smiling, "Dig in. I think I'm really getting better at this whole cooking thing."


	27. Kamikaze

If only stomping her feet, screaming at the top of her lungs, throwing an out and out tantrum would have been the way to go. It would have been a welcome release from the tension, the overwhelming panic that she was feeling. Every muscle in her body was ready for a fight, but she knew that wasn't the way to get him on her side.

What was the way, though? Rachel had come here to plead her case, to enlist him, and he was siding with…God, hearing him say those two words right then made her want to punch him in all four eyes.

((Prince Jake…))

"Yeah, Ax, we all know you're one hundred percent behind Prince Jake."

She spat out those last two words like rotten food.

((Your percents have nothing to do with it. Prince Jake is correct in ascertaining that Tobias must be the one who the Yeerks use to test the morphing ray.))

"How can you say that?" Rachel's voice was suddenly low and deceptively quiet, not hiding the anger behind it as well as it should have. Trying to get Ax to go against his Prince Jake was making her sound exactly like...well, like Jake.

"They'll torture him. You know the Yeerks better than any of us. You know they will. He might not…"

She struggled to keep it together long enough to make him understand. She knew he agreed with her, felt the same way about this. All she had to do was make him _understand_ and Tobias wouldn't have to do this.

"It's a suicide mission. You and me can go to Jake tonight and convince him that this is crazy. Tomorrow, the whole thing's called off. Or…or maybe I'll get captured and let them test it on me. I don't know, why not, right?"

She flashed the saddest smile in the world; a smile completely unable to hide the pure desperation behind it.

((Because that is selfish.))

Rachel felt the words like a smack across the face.

"Selfish? I'm offering to maybe die in his place and you're calling me _selfish_? Look, Ax…"

She pointed her finger at his face, but dropped it when he interrupted her with a thought-speak voice even more stern and steady than usual.

((You wish to go in his place because you do not want any harm to come to him. Because he is like family to you. Because…))

His voice faltered only slightly before he corrected himself.

((Because you love him. But we are warriors, Rachel. And Tobias is a warrior as well. He knows that he must be used to test the morphing ray because it is the only way to protect our army. He has put his own fears aside to do what is right for the group. We must do the same.))

Rachel heard everything Ax said, but still couldn't let herself really listen. She still had to fight against the inevitable. Even knowing that this was a losing battle, something inside her that she still didn't totally understand insisted on going down swinging.

The hard approach hadn't worked, so she tried a softer one.

"Ax, Tobias is your…" She searched for the right word and gave up trying to find it. "Well, I don't know exactly what you two are, but Elfangor was his father."

((I'm aware,)) Ax said curtly.

"What would you do without him? What would you do without him, living by yourself in these woods?"

And what the hell would she do without Tobias to gently nudge her back over the line to sanity? That line was moving everywhere these days, skipping around, shifting when she had her guard down and didn't notice. She couldn't keep tabs on it by herself, and she knew instinctively that losing him would send her careening over the edge.

Ax's main eyes remained focused on her, but his stalk eyes wandered for a moment.

((I hope I do not have to find out.))

"So that's it, huh?" She threw her hands up in disgust. She hated the whole universe and everything in it at that moment. "That's all we do? We love him, and all we do is hope?"

((No. That is not all.))

"What then?" she snapped. She was pissed at Ax, already over this conversation.

((We get out of the way.))


	28. The Last Sleepover

They used to have sleepovers all the time.

The last one was when they were eleven. They talked about all the typical things girls that age like to talk about; boys, clothes, hair. Rachel tried braiding Cassie's thick, coarse locks.

"This is so hard. No wonder you never fix your hair," she teased.

Cassie ran a comb through Rachel's thin, long blonde hair and smiled.

"This is so easy," she teased right back. "I don't get why it takes you a million hours in the bathroom in the morning."

They laughed at each other and at themselves, never pretending that they weren't opposites, but never questioning or reconsidering their bond as best friends.

The sleepovers stopped after that night. They never officially banned them, never really talked about why they weren't interesting anymore. Their sleepovers just fell through the cracks along with other things that were now subconsciously considered too childish for girls on the brink of their teenage years.

How terrible and ironic the thought of wishing to be more grown up was now, on a night like this. They were supposed to be having a sleepover, like old times. Rachel thought it was an odd request, especially now that they had not only left childish things behind; they had stuffed them away forever in the past. But then she thought maybe that was exactly why Cassie wanted to rekindle old times.

Rachel had gotten everything ready for a night where their only mission was to bond and act like complete idiots. She'd gotten Ben and Jerry's, People magazines, and was already making a mental list of all the idiots at school they were going to gossip about, including that new girl who had been eyeing Jake.

Rachel's heart sank when the first words out of Cassie's mouth were "We have to do something."

Rachel gave a long sigh. "Cassie, I really hope that we are not talking about Joe Bob Whatever right now." She tried to gloss over her hurt with determination to win a debate. They weren't long into this war, but she knew that she was about to disagree with Cassie.

Yet again.

"We are definitely talking about Fenestre. He's killing people." Cassie was pacing around Rachel's bedroom. This kind of nervous, almost manic energy from her friend immediately set Rachel on edge.

"He's killing Yeerks. Yeerks, Cassie. Remember who we're fighting?" She knew she was being condescending, but she didn't feel like fighting fair right now.

"We're fighting evil." Cassie's eyes were pleading, and Rachel knew what was coming next. "He's evil, Rachel. He has to be stopped."

Rachel laughed bitterly. "You're trying to enlist me on a mission, behind the other's backs, to deal with something we all agreed we were going to leave alone for the time being? This is the best sleepover ever."

"Rachel…"

Cassie's apology was cut short. "Whatever. I get it. You needed a cover to be gone all night. But the answer is no, okay? We're not doing this."

"I am doing this." Cassie wasn't pacing anymore. Suddenly, she was standing still, and the look on her face made Rachel wonder if the old Cassie was gone and a new Cassie had taken her place, a Cassie who would try to use their friendship to manipulate her.

"I have to do this," Cassie continued. "And I need your help."

Rachel shook her head. "No. You're wrong on this one."

Cassie rolled her eyes. "Come on, Rachel. You don't really believe that 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' crap, do you?"

"I don't know," Rachel said defensively. "Maybe I do."

They just stood there for a second, staring at each other, neither person willing to budge an inch. For the first time since the war started, it really hit Rachel hard that she and Cassie would always be on the same team, but when it came down to it, they might not be on the same side very often.

"You weren't there, Rachel," Cassie went on relentlessly. "You weren't there when we talked to him. You didn't look into those eyes, hear that voice…"

"Because I was knocked out!" Rachel hoped Cassie wouldn't notice that she was getting way too loud.

"Quiet down. We don't need your mom coming in here. And all I meant was that you don't fully understand who we're dealing with here."

"And I'm supposed to just trust your take on the situation?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Rachel sat down at her desk. She shook her head for a moment, running a hand through her hair. "You know what…it doesn't mean anything, okay? Just forget it." She shrugged. "Why are you even here? You know I don't agree with you on this. Why not get…"

And then it hit her. She instantly saw the embarrassment in Cassie's face and Rachel knew that she had guessed right.

"You already tried Jake, didn't you? He won't help you. You knew Jake was pretty much your only shot to get someone to side with you. And when that didn't work you came here."

_Because you know I won't rat you out to the others. Because you know I'll go with you even if I think you're wrong, to keep you from getting yourself killed. Because I'm your best friend._

Cassie looked down. "Maybe Jake's not the person I thought he was."

"Not the person you thought he was? Because he won't back you on this one thing? Boy, you are a really high-maintenance girlfriend."

That last part was meant to come across as playful and maybe lighten the mood.

It didn't.

"Girlfriend? Please," Cassie backpedaled. "We've never even kissed." She shook her head as if she were shaking away a stray thought. "But that doesn't matter right now. That's not what we're talking about here."

"I can't let you get yourself killed." Rachel didn't really say it affectionately.

"I'm not going to force you to help me. I can take care of myself." Cassie turned around to leave.

Rachel wanted to stop her. She didn't want to help Cassie, but she didn't want to lose her either. Being best friends wasn't fun anymore, wasn't about sleepovers and parties. Being Cassie's best friend right now felt like a burden; but a burden that was such an automatic part of who she was that she didn't want to be without it. Rachel looked up from being lost in thought to ask Cassie what the plan was, what their next move would have to be.

But Cassie was already gone.


	29. Dress For Success

The green dress didn't get to come out very often, and it was definitely a special occasion whenever it did. The light green color brought out her eyes and made her blonde hair seem even brighter. The best part, though, was the fit. Never completely abandoning her fashion sense in even the most stressful of times, Rachel had to admire the skillful tailoring. The green dress was a perfect fit. Tight enough to be flattering, but not too tight. A great choice for a night out.

"Zip me up?" Naomi looked over her shoulder at Rachel.

"Already on it." Rachel zipped up the dress, feeling oddly like a personal stylist. "So…" she started in awkwardly, breaking the already awkward silence, "You excited about your date?"

Naomi laughed a little and shrugged. "I don't know if I'm _excited_, exactly…I mean, Jackson is very nice, and we've been working together for awhile…but you know how these things can go."

Now it was Rachel's turn to laugh. "Um…no, actually, I have no idea how these things can go." She gave Naomi a sarcastic wave in the mirror. "Hi, it's me, Rachel."

And she didn't. Relationship aside, Rachel had no idea what it was like to meet someone at work or at school and start a casual relationship, building up slowly from…how were things supposed to build, again? _Hi, nice to meet you, I like you, I love you…_sex was supposed to get sandwiched in there somewhere, probably between the _I like you _and the _I love you_…but it was all really fuzzy to her, how people with normal lives managed dating.

Watching her mother get ready to go out on a date was…weird. And she felt bad for feeling weird about it. She wanted to see her mom happy, she truly did. And she didn't think it would be right for her mom to have to sneak around. Nothing remotely wrong with a single woman dating, after all. It was just…there was some part of Rachel that still envisioned her parents together, despite logic and even emotion dictating that they weren't right for each other anymore. She didn't really even fantasize about it happening, wasn't sure she truly even wanted them back together…there was just something a little sad in seeing her mom dating putting the final nail in that coffin.

There was also a little twinge of jealousy, and she felt really guilty about that. Her mom was supposed to be helping _her _get ready for dates, but Rachel instinctively knew that most school dances, proms, and stuff like that weren't in her future. The world wasn't going to save itself, after all. She knew her mom didn't get out a lot, didn't have a whole lot of friends or much of a social life. But she was still way ahead of Rachel in that department.

Naomi turned around to face her daughter, finished examining herself in the mirror. "So I look okay, right?"

Rachel smiled. "Yeah, you look great."

"I'm counting on you to be my fashion expert."

Rachel rolled her eyes. "I already told you, you look good. Where did you even get this dress anyway?"

Naomi sighed. "Oh, it was forever ago. I don't remember exactly where I got it. I bought it so your father and I could go to some engagement party for some of his friends that I barely knew. I was in law school then and I dipped into my rent money to try and impress him."

Rachel noticed Naomi drifting off for a minute, maybe to whatever halfway house in the corner of the mind old relationships live in, reminiscing with each other about better days.

"Anyway," she went on, "it's old."

Rachel nodded in approval. "I'm surprised it still fits, you know, with three kids and…" she stopped when she saw the look on Naomi's face. It was not fun to be on the receiving end of that look.

"Well…" she cleared her throat for a few extra seconds, buying herself some time. "Have a good time tonight."

Naomi smiled, as if the possibility of actually having a good time was just now dawning on her, and it felt good. "I will." She shifted gears back into mom mode seamlessly. "Take care of your sisters. Dinner's…"

"I know," Rachel interrupted. "Dinner's in the freezer. All I have to do is heat it up. And I think I can make sure Jordan and Sarah don't kill each other for a few hours...or however long your date lasts, I mean."

The ensuing pause was brief, but the awkwardness could have stretched across oceans. Rachel and Naomi trying to have a conversation about dating wasn't the blind leading the blind. It was the blind tripping over each other and knocking over everything in the room.

"Well, okay then," Naomi said, giving her daughter a hug that Rachel thought was completely unnecessary.

"Okay," Rachel said, confused as she broke the hug. "Have fun." She gave Naomi a little half-wave.

"I'll try to."

Naomi gave a tight smile and left Rachel's room, only lingering at the door for a few seconds. After she was gone, Rachel popped in some headphones and flopped down on her bed. She wanted the music to drown out the peculiar mix of hopefulness for her mother and self-pity for her own uniquely screwed up existence. Instead, the music just mixed with the emotion and she felt stuck lying there, jumbled feelings hammering with the baseline.


	30. Brownies and Cockroaches

"I'm breaking up with Arnold today!"

Jordan came charging into the kitchen, where Rachel was trying to enjoy the remainder of her Cinnamon Toast Crunch in peace.

Obviously, that was no longer a possibility.

"I don't remember asking about your little boyfriend," Rachel said dismissively, not at all in the mood for this, "but I guess that's good to know."

"Relationships are so _hard_!" Jordan whined.

Rachel put her spoon down abruptly. As much as she didn't want to get into this, she couldn't let that comment go.

"_Relationship_? Jordan, you aren't in a relationship and you never have been."

"You don't know that! You don't know what I do when you're not around. Stop acting all cool. You're not that much older than me, Rachel. How would you know that I'm not in a relationship, which I so am."

"Okay, you obviously want to talk about this, and I want to get this over with, so come over here," Rachel said grudgingly.

Jordan joined her at the table, pained expression never leaving her face.

"What's the big deal here?" Rachel asked. "I thought you had boyfriends…oh wait, I'm sorry," she corrected herself melodramatically, "I thought you had _relationships _every week."

"Yeah, but Arnold and I have been together for almost a month now." Jordan sighed dejectedly.

"A month, huh? Picked out your wedding dress yet?" Rachel was seriously considering going back to paying more attention to her cereal than her sister.

"Come on Rachel." Jordan looked genuinely upset now and not just whiney. "I really like him."

"Oh." Rachel was surprised. She felt like she should stop making fun of Jordan, realizing that her little sister was in the throes of puppy love, which could only mean trouble. "Look, Jordan…"

Jordan interrupted, clearly more interested in doing the talking than the listening in this conversation. "I really like him, but I saw him sitting with Ashley Wincher at lunch today. We were supposed to meet up at lunch, we always do. And we always sit together. And it's really sweet how he uses his allowance to buy me an extra dessert. But I saw him sitting with her and…I guess we have to break up now. But I think I love him."

"Oh, Jordan." Rachel felt a mixture of affection and annoyance, otherwise known as the age-old bond between sisters. "I can't even get into this lunchroom stuff. It just doesn't make sense, I can't sort it out. But I do know that you don't love this boy because he buys you brownies."

"It feels like I do. I told him I did."

Rachel tried to relate. She wasn't an "I love you" kind of person, not even with Tobias.

The first and one of the few times they said it out loud, they were cockroaches. They were getting ready to crawl their way through a completely disgusting bathroom trying to find a new entrance to a Yeerk pool. Rachel's cockroach instincts were telling her that the smell of shit mixed with not-quite-strong-enough industrial cleaning solution wasn't disgusting. The cockroach felt right at home.

And so did she. It was normal, natural. Just another day, just another mission. This wasn't even close to the most dangerous mission they had been on, wasn't even close to the most disgusting thing she had done. It had felt like she imagined just another day at the office would feel.

((Be careful in there,)) Tobias had said to her in private thought-speak.

((You too. Love you.)) She had said it automatically, without even thinking.

((Love you too.))

And just like that, he'd said it back. There was no kiss, no romantic moment, no background music. They hadn't even had time to get the "I" out before the "love you's."

Some girls get their milestones in schools.

Some girls get them in insect morph, tiny legs struggling to pry themselves away from a urine stain before charging headfirst into a Yeerk pool entrance, without enough time to utter an extra syllable.

The funny thing was, looking at Jordan's face across the kitchen table; Rachel was beginning to wonder if the girls in the hallways had it any better than the girl in the urine stain.

"You told him you loved him?" Rachel winced, imagining her sister's embarrassment.

Jordan nodded, a couple tears rolling out of her eyes.

"And then you saw him with this other girl?"

Jordan nodded again.

"Did he say he loved you?"

Jordan shook her head, staring down at the table. "No. He didn't say anything. And then the next day I saw him with Ashley."

Rachel took a deep breath. If she was going to help her sister with this, she needed to get into her comfort zone. She stopped looking at this as a relationship issue and started to map it out like she was used to mapping out strikes on Yeerk pools.

"Okay, I know this looks bad. But let's think this through. There are all kinds of reasons he might have been sitting with Ashley. Maybe they're working on a project together. Maybe their parents know each other. We don't know. And you should ask him before you just dump him. And maybe he didn't say anything because he was just embarrassed."

Jordan looked up slowly. "So, you think he loves me?"

"Well," Rachel said carefully, "he does use his allowance to buy you dessert. That's gotta mean something, right? Maybe a kid who cares enough to do something nice for you every day wouldn't just go casually eating lunch with another girl for no reason."

Jordan wiped away her tears. "So…what you're saying is that I should still go out with a guy, even if I think he might be cheating on me, if he's nice to me and he buys me stuff?"

Rachel rubbed her forehead in frustration. "No, that's not what I'm saying."

Jordan looked confused. "That's kind of what you just said."

"No, Jordan…" Rachel looked at her younger sister and felt the satisfaction of being able to be honest with her, one time out of a million. "I guess all I'm saying is that life can suck a lot. It can be really hard. So you should be grateful when it's good, instead of bitching…I mean complaining…about how it's not perfect. Because it's mostly going to be bad. Same thing goes for boys."

Jordan seemed to almost grasp what Rachel was saying, tentatively holding onto the edge of it, struggling with the concept. After a few minutes of mental and emotional gymnastics that rivaled anything Rachel was ever able to achieve on a balance beam, she threw up her hands and stomped her foot under the table in exasperation.

"So should I break up with Arnold or what?" Jordan put all of the confusion and sincerity of middle school love into that question, which was still unyielding in providing a concrete answer.

Rachel smiled kindly. "It's your choice, Jordan. I can't make the decision for you."

She got up to leave, still smiling because right then, in that one moment, she didn't feel alone.

"Wait…where are you going?" Jordan still sounded like a mess of confusion, but Rachel knew that her sister was going to have to untangle this one by herself.

"You don't know what I do when you're not around," she teased. "Maybe I have a date."


	31. The Oddest Moments

Rachel popped into her head at the oddest times.

Melissa never felt haunted by her, just visited occasionally. It was always little moments, tiny flashes in her memory. They felt like being paid a surprise visit by a stranger who had once been an acquaintance, and had been a friend before that. Just like when they were teenage girls who had drifted apart, the flashes of Rachel that existed in Melissa's memory were just images that Melissa's own mind had painted over time, covering up the picture of the real girl who had lived and fought and died.

Melissa knew that when people died, the truth of who they were died with them. All that got left behind were other people's interpretations of who they were; memories so unreliable they might as well be lies.

She knew this because of her parents. They would always be remembered as two people who had been innocent victims in a war, two prisoners finally freed. But she remembered how, even after regaining control of their minds and bodies, lifeless stares would still come over them sometimes, like they had lost their souls during those captive years. She remembered how they had refused to talk about all the details of their captivity, but that was all she wanted to talk about, her last desperate attempt to reconnect with them. But they wouldn't talk about it, so they all talked about nothing at all, shooting meaningless pleasantries into the breeze.

She knew this because of her husband. He would always be remembered as an innocent victim of a car crash, a family man, a life claimed too young. But she remembered the arguments that went in circles, the separate beds, the brunette from the billing department. All swept under the rug with the rest of the dirt she just pushed around with the broom, never really cleaning.

And mostly, Melissa knew this because of herself. Climbing the stairs to her bedroom, her body old enough that the repetitive motion was hard on her knees, she knew what she would always be remembered as. A devoted wife, then a mourning widow, always a loving parent. But she remembered how, every year after Andrew was born until he left for college, she promised herself that she would finish her degree. She remembered how she was going to get back into the dating scene, find her great love at a mature age and live out the rest of her days with him.

The picture in Melissa's mind of what should have been her life not matching reality didn't bother her anymore. And if it did, it just came in tiny flashes of disappointment, nothing major enough to disrupt her daily routine.

Climbing the stairs, one sore knee in front of the other, was a very odd time to think of Rachel.


	32. Couple's Counseling

"Dude, you might want to ease up on the fries…just saying."

"No, Marco, I don't know what you're just saying." Jake shot him a death glare across the lunch table.

Rachel rolled her eyes. "We're here for a reason, guys, and it's not so you two can have your little lover's quarrel."

Cassie laughed softly.

Now Marco and Jake were both glaring at Rachel.

"Lover's quarrel? Excuse me?" Jake was still munching on his fries.

"Yeah," Marco said defensively, "I could do better than love handles over here." He jerked his thumb towards Jake.

"Excuse you?" Jake's eyebrows shot straight up. "Love handles? Really, dude?"

Marco shrugged. "You're not as athletic as you used to be." He held up his hands mock-defensively. "I know the truth hurts, man, but I'm here to speak it."

"Guess I don't have time for basketball or the gym in between saving your ass and showing up for school. And for the record, if I swung that way, I wouldn't stoop down to your level…literally."

"Ooh…short joke…points for originality."

Rachel was starting to think this was the real reason none of them ever ate lunch together. And she was very, very grateful not to have to listen to this every day.

"A little help here?" She looked over at Cassie.

Cassie kept her voice calm and low, both for the sake of secrecy and preserving the peace. "Marco, I know you're upset because you're the one Jake asked to morph the dung beetle and…"

"I can't even talk about what I had to do back there, Cassie." Marco interrupted her, shaking his head. "The things I've seen…"

Cassie forged on. "But you did draw the short straw, and…"

"It was rigged. Fixed."

"Would you stop interrupting her?" Rachel snapped.

"I am merely drawing attention to a grave injustice," Marco snapped back.

"Okay," Cassie cut in, still using her best mediator voice. "Marco, I know you're still upset about getting the worst job last night. But pointing out Jake's love handles is hurtful and not very productive."

"Oh, Cassie," Rachel sighed. "You shouldn't have tried."

"What?" Cassie asked, genuinely clueless.

"Hold up," Jake interjected. "What do you mean 'pointing out my love handles?' _You _think I have love handles?"

"I think you look great," Cassie answered way too quickly.

"That's a yes," Marco added helpfully.

"Do you think I can't save your life and kick your ass in the same day?" Jake asked tensely. "Because it's about to happen."

"Whatever."

"Don't 'whatever' me."

Cassie held up her hands in defeat. "I'm done. Back to you, Rachel."

"Okay, look," Rachel tried to lay down the law, "we have about twenty minutes of lunch left. That leaves twenty minutes to talk about the mission that we couldn't organize another time to talk about, and zero minutes for Cassie and me to give you two marriage counseling. Okay?"

There were a few moments of silence before Marco spoke.

"I don't feel that Jake and I are ready for marriage until this relationship," he gestured back and forth between himself and Jake, "is a safe space where I can express my feelings."

"There's not gonna be a safe space for you anywhere if you don't shut the hell up right now," Jake grumbled with a mouthful of burger.

"Are you eating out of hurt? Because if there's one thing Oprah's taught us, it's that food doesn't equal love."

"Never knew you were such a big Oprah fan."

"You don't know a lot of things. Like, for instance, when you morph a dung beetle…"

Rachel and Cassie exchanged glances, got up, and moved to another lunch table.


	33. Inbetween Pessimism and Optimism

"I love you."

They probably thought she was talking to Tobias.

And she was, but she was talking to all of them. After all the battles, all the blood, all the arguments and all the secrets, it was all she knew how to say to them. There was still so much unsaid between the six of them, and there always would be. Connections running that deep don't lend themselves well to words.

The past three years hadn't turned her into what could be called an optimist, but she almost smiled in the end. Every emotion in existence had changed hands between the six of them, from what even the hardest heart would recognize as love to the ugly sting of something dancing on the edge of hate.

In the end, though, it was the good pieces of who they all were that stuck with her, taking over her thoughts. Focusing on that goodness made her think that maybe she wasn't so damaged, wasn't so incapable of moving past the ugliness of war into something that could possibly turn into a happy life.

She wouldn't get to, of course, but feeling that possibility meant everything to her in the end.


	34. Stand-In

The alarm clock sounded like the annoying screech of a million whining children and the light from the window slapped her hard across the face.

Rachel would have cut off her own arm for an extra fifteen minutes of sleep. She could have grown it back through the magic of morphing, anyway. But she was already cutting it close with the time she had set the alarm for, so she hauled herself out of bed and threw some clothes on. Today wasn't going to be an "outfit" day; it was going to be a "clothes" day. She stalked off to the bathroom.

As she splashed water on her face, she made a decision. She was just going to apply for a personal Chee to start going to school for her full-time. No questions asked, doesn't matter whether there was a mission last night or not. If it involved getting up early and drudging like a zombie through the halls, a Chee would be doing it for her from now on.

Of course, Jake was going to say that this was selfish. The others had to keep up appearances, they were all just as tired as she was, the Chee weren't their personal servants…blah, blah, blah. What Jake needed to understand was that she wasn't like the others. She couldn't keep having late nights and early mornings without ripping someone's face off at school. The others were obviously coping. She wasn't. Special needs, special accommodations.

The knock on the bathroom door made her jump straight up in the air. "Rachel! My turn!"

"Just a minute, Sara," Rachel snapped. She reached into her makeup bag to find the magic wand that would make her look like she'd gotten eight hours of sleep last night.

"Rachel!"

"Okay!" Rachel practically yelled, then took a deep breath. "Okay," she said, more calmly this time, "I'm coming out. Your turn."

She threw the stick of whatever she was holding back into the makeup bag. It just wasn't going to happen today, and who cared?

She opened the bathroom door to find Sara beaming up at her. The open display of cheerfulness caught her off guard. "Someone's in a good mood today."

"Of course," Sara answered simply. "Aren't you excited for my party tonight?"

"Your party? I didn't know…" Halfway through the sentence, Rachel's weary memory jolted back to life and gaped in horror at itself. "…oh, of course, your party! Happy birthday!"

She recovered pretty well, not pausing too long, but anyone expect Sara probably would have noticed how hard she was trying to twist her voice into happy tones.

"Thanks!" Sara bubbled. "What'd you get me?"

Rachel squatted down so she was at Sara's eye level, forcing a huge smile. "If I tell you now, then it won't be a surprise for tonight."

She felt like an absolute piece of shit.

* * *

She meant to knock on Jake's door, but ended up pounding on it instead.

Luckily for her, it was Jake who answered, immediately recognizing her jitteriness as trouble.

"Rachel," he said carefully, "Uh…what are you doing here? I'll see you at school in just a little bit."

She grabbed his arm and yanked him inside.

"What's going on?" he hissed as she continued to drag him upstairs to his room and practically slam the door behind them.

"No," Jake shook his head like he couldn't quite believe the life he was leading. "No door slamming. It is too early for door slamming."

"Just letting you know that I won't be coming tonight," Rachel bulldozed.

Jake rubbed his eyes for a second and cocked his head at her, weary from lack of sleep himself. "What?"

"Can't make it." Rachel's shrug came off looking more like a minor seizure.

"What?" Jake looked at her in disbelief. "You know we need you there."

"Sara's birthday."

Jake looked confused for a moment, then like he was remembering something important and then like he felt incredibly guilty.

"Shit." He shook his head.

"I know. So anyway, I can't go to school now, or at least the first half of school, because I need to go dig up my extra cash and buy her a present. And obviously now I won't be able to be there tonight, so…"

"Rachel, we need you there," Jake cut in, his voice stern and sharp around the edges.

"Sara will be crushed."

"She'll be crushed if she knows you forgot. I'll cut the first half of school today, too. I'll make contact with Erek and find a Chee to go to the party for you. Then I'll go get my own gift and the Chee can give both of our presents to Sara tonight."

"It should be me at that party. I should go for her."

"Can't happen." Jake's voice was getting even sharper. "We absolutely need you there tonight."

"Is that an order?" Rachel asked acidly.

Jake chuckled humorlessly. "Let's not do this, Rachel."

"Let's not do what?"

"Let's not do this whole bullshit dance we've been doing lately where you and I get into a power struggle. Far be it from me to order you to do anything. Am I making contact with Erek today or am I not?"

The anger and disappointment Rachel felt didn't have a target and it didn't need one. There was enough inside her to spread to the whole universe.

"Why are we still standing here?" she snapped. "Go make contact with Erek."

Angry as she was, she couldn't help but feel like she should be thrilled. She wouldn't be at a boring kid's party; she'd be out on the battlefield. She wouldn't have to bother with social conventions that she was getting more and more terrible at. Someone else was going to do that for her while she did what she did best.

Things were going to work out like she had wished they would hundreds of times.


	35. Blonde Ambition

You probably don't know who I am, even though you totally should.

I've been in some stuff that got some recognition. There was the Bruce Willis movie. That got me a few decent reviews and a couple sitcom guest shots. I'm not too self-deluded to admit that I'm C-list, though. Okay, fuck it, maybe even D-list.

The thing is, I just can't take acting seriously anymore. I used to buy into the whole magic of pretending to be someone you're not for a little while. Okay, more than a little while. I might not be a star, but I've been working pretty steadily for the past couple years. T.V. movies, plays, you name it. And I just don't feel the spark anymore.

I've been going through the motions lately. Acting isn't my dream anymore. I'm not even sure I can honestly say that I have any clear career goals. It's a job. Just a job. A paycheck like any other paycheck. Well, the paychecks are pretty damn awesome, so maybe not like any other paycheck, but you see what I'm getting at here.

I mean, I got spit on last week. Spit on. If that's not hard, disgusting work, then I don't know what is. This little shit who thinks she's some child star, even though she's only on her second Lifetime movie, sprayed all over me during a scene. I mean, I can understand how there would be a little bit of spit. She _was_ supposed to be telling me that the cancer had come back and she would have to get more chemo. Still…show a little respect for your scene partner.

And the week before that, I had to kiss some idiot who smelled like Ax body spray and Doritos. He was trying to cover up the Dorito with the Ax, but it wasn't happening. It's no wonder the commercial came out looking stupid. How was I supposed to find any chemistry with someone like that? Just because you have a six pack doesn't mean you don't have to brush your teeth. Gross. And he used tongue for two out of six takes. That's just unprofessional.

I won't have to put up with that crap anymore if I get Rachel. My agent says this could be The One. You know, the role that takes me off the D-list and puts me on the A-list. I know they want to go with a big name, but the fact that they're giving me an audition means something, right?

I feel like Rachel could give me my spark back. God, I really need her to. I need her to make me love this job again. I need that even more than I need her to make me a star. The Animorphs movie is a guaranteed money-maker, and the script hasn't even been finalized. People are already talking about how excited they are to see it; to hear all the behind-the-scenes dirt. All I need is my foot in that door.

I've already gone blonde. It was expensive, but Angela did a really great job. She even made the eyebrows look natural. I don't know about blondes having more fun, though. I've been working non-stop, learning everything I can about her. How she walked, how she talked, how she morphed. I need to know everything.

Because people are going to remember me as Rachel, and then they're going to remember my real name.


	36. Joyride

You've gotta understand that I'm not a bad guy.

I've maybe gone along with some things that I wasn't crazy about. But you've also gotta understand what's at stake for me here. I can't lose my place on the team. I'm here on scholarship. My mom could never afford to send me to this school. Football is all I have. It's all that's keeping me from staying at home with my mom, working my way up to assistant manager at the liquor store.

And James basically runs this team. He's been Mr. Quarterback for two years in a row. Coach loves him. Everyone loves him. Impressing him, being one of his boys, it's what's keeping me here, man. If he gets pissed at me, he could influence Coach and the whole team to turn against me. Then it's off the team, out of the dorms, back living with Mom, and I can't have that.

And it's not like I didn't have any fun that night. It felt pretty awesome just cruising around with the beers in James' car. The fact that he didn't seem to give a shit about getting caught or pulled over made me feel like I could maybe be like him for a night. You know, the kind of dude who struts through life doing whatever he wants because he knows that consequences don't apply to him. Guys like that…man, even when they have everything to lose, they never will.

I felt bad about the girl, though. I really did. She looked like she couldn't have been older than fifteen…maybe even younger. Damn, I don't know. I was pretty buzzed at that point. James was shitfaced…not that it changed his personality much.

"Hey, sweetheart, what's your name?"

James sped up the car so that she couldn't possibly have gotten away from us. The things was, though, it didn't seem like she wanted to get away. She was a pretty thing; blonde, athletic-looking. And she didn't seem embarrassed or afraid of James' bluntness and beer breath. I felt a hell of a lot more embarrassed than this girl looked.

"Name's Melissa."

James stopped the car next to her, and I guess she didn't magically hear my thoughts telling her to keep walking, because she stopped too.

"Melissa, huh?" James looked her up and down. Twice. "So, Melissa, what're you doin' out here tonight? This ain't exactly a safe spot, is it Andy?"

"No, it sure isn't, man." I didn't want to look at either of them.

"That why you guys are out here drinking and driving?" She sounded like…man, it's hard to pinpoint. It was kinda like she knew she should be scared, but she just wasn't.

"Get in." James sounded like he owned the world and every person in it when he said that.

I didn't want to piss James off, but I tried to distract him. "Come on, dude, she doesn't wanna get in the car. Let's just…"

"Let's go." She cut me off and got in the backseat.

James sped off and I suddenly felt almost sober.

"Sooo…Melissa…you like older guys, then, huh?"

"Jesus Christ," I muttered so quietly I don't think either one of them heard me.

"I'm gonna get us some more beer." James sped the car up, looking for a liquor store. I made brief eye contact with Melissa in the rearview mirror, wondering if this was some kinda setup; if I was gonna end up on To Catch A Predator or the six o'clock news.

* * *

"Just get out, okay?"

We were parked at the liquor store.

"What?" She sounded like she wasn't even listening to me.

"Get out." I turned around from the passenger's seat to look at her waiting there in the back, like a sitting duck resigned to her fate. "He won't even care that you're gone, trust me. Just get out of the car, sweetheart."

"Sweetheart?" She made the same face my little sister makes when she tastes something bad. "Don't call me sweetheart like you're my dad or something."

"Oh, I see." I cocked my head at her. "Melissa, is it? Is that your name? Never mind, I don't really care. Trying to piss of daddy? Stepdaddy? That what this is?"

"Don't act like…"

"Please," I snorted, "I can spot a poor little rich girl coming a mile away."

"But…"

"Just get out of the car."

And what do you know? She did; false bravery going with her the whole way, wobbling on heels that didn't fit.

I saw James stumbling back to the car, about to drop the twelve-pack of piss-water he just bought with his dad's credit card.

I was thinking two things, watching him grin like an idiot and struggle towards the car. First, I thought about my mom and my sister and hoped that maybe one time he'd pick the wrong girl, the wrong street, the wrong time…and maybe he'd have to feel what consequences are like.

I have to admit, I felt this second thing way more strongly than I felt the first. I know it'll seem less important, but I'm just being straight with you. I felt like I should walk my drunk ass into that liquor store and apply for a job.

Because, looking into James' bloodshot eyes, I knew I was gonna spend my whole life cleaning up other people's messes. Why not get paid minimum wage for it?


	37. Cold-Blooded Creatures

"Rachel! He's dead!"

The sad reality of her life was that so many contexts for "Rachel! He's dead!" existed. Hearing the words caused her mind to shuffle rapidly through possibilities like a deck of cards. _Who's dead? Tobias? Jake? Marco? Ax? Cassie? Can't be Cassie, she's not a he. How did they go out? In morph, as a human…what? Am I in a battle right now and hallucinating being back in my bedroom? Is Crayak behind this? Who do I have to kill now? Wait…Sara's voice. Oh God, is someone in the house? Did they find out about us?_

"What happened?" She couldn't conceal the panic as she flew down the hall and swung open the door to Sara's room. "Are you okay?"

Sara seemed surprised at her older sister's level of panic, even as she held back tears and pointed to her nightstand. "Gregory's dead!"

Rachel looked at the nightstand and instantly felt relieved. The tension in her body melted away as she noticed the goldfish floating belly-up in his bowl. She felt a twinge of guilt when she looked back into Sara's face, but she didn't feel it as strongly as she was pretty sure she should have. The facts were simple, and she hoped that one day Sara would be able to understand them. Out of all the possible contexts for "Rachel! He's dead!" the death of a family pet was one of the ones that didn't leave the world completely fucked, and that was cause for relief.

Rachel went over to Sara and put a hand on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry."

Rachel prepared herself for Sara to burst into tears and start crying on her shoulder. She knew she was no good at being a shoulder to cry on, but she was never one to turn down the call of duty. What happened instead surprised her.

A few stray tears made their way down Sara's face, but she wiped them away quickly, walking over to Gregory's bowl and gingerly poking his body. "How do you think he died?"

"I…um…what?" Rachel was thrown off-balance by Sara's bluntness.

"What do you think happened to him?" Sara asked with a mixture of curiosity and sadness that Rachel had never quite heard before.

"Well…"

Not sure what the right answer was, Rachel felt a strange connection to Gregory, staring up at them with dead eyes. She knew what it was like to be a fish, her human intellect having to fight against the animal instinct. There were times when she wanted to let the animal win; surrender the constant worry and planning for the trained focus on only the most immediate needs. _Food…shelter…swim…repeat…_

Sometimes, God help them all, she would tune Jake out and just coast in the water, letting the tiny but blissfully simplistic brain tell her _food…shelter…swim…repeat_. The battle orders were always the same, anyway..._Go in first, be our battering ram, be our shield, repeat…_

"I think it was pretty peaceful for him," Rachel answered Sara's curious eyes. Thinking about the times when she had had gills and had ended up on land, flopping around and feeling the oxygen start to drain from her brain, she imagined that just giving out from what had to be old age by now and floating belly-up in your bowl really wasn't so bad.

Out of all the horrible, unimaginable, screamingly painful ways to die, Gregory had lucked out.

"Should we flush him?" Sara asked. Rachel did a double-take and wondered just who this little girl in front of her was.

"Well, I mean…no. We don't have to flush him. He was your pet. We could have a funeral and…"

Sara shook her head. "No. Let's flush him."

"Uh, okay, it's totally cool if you want to do that. He was your pet. Can I ask why?"

Sara shrugged. "Gregory was a goldfish. Isn't that what you're supposed to do when goldfish die?"

Rachel couldn't help but smile and think that maybe someday, when this war was out in the open, she wouldn't have to worry so much about Sara. Maybe Sara would be okay.

She scooped Gregory out of his bowl and headed for the bathroom. "Come on then, let's do this." Sara followed close behind her.

Rachel opened her hand and held the cold, scaly little body out to Sara. "Do you want me to drop him in or do you want to do it?"

Sara reached out for Gregory, hesitated, and then reached out again. "I'll do it."

"Okay." Rachel handed her the body.

"Bye, Gregory," Sara said softly as she dropped him in the toilet.

Rachel flushed, then held her sister's hand as they watched the small orange body spiral downward.


	38. Flash Forward

_No one wants to become their parents_…

* * *

"I'm home." Tobias's voice was strained as he walked through the front door.

"Been out flying?" Rachel asked curtly.

"You know I have," Tobias answered, and they were both surprised at how defensive his normally gentle voice was.

"I know," Rachel snapped, never one to hide irritation well.

"Why do you say it like that?" Tobias exhaled sharply. "You're acting like you think I'm cheating on you or something."

"Are you?"

"_What_? Rachel, I can't even…" Tobias tried to walk past her, but she blocked his way.

"Rachel, get out of the way." He stared through her with a hawk's gaze, like she was an obstacle.

"I know you're not cheating on me, okay?" she blurted out hurriedly, her eyes hurt and angry and scared. "I know that's not it. It's just…we talked about this."

"Rachel." And his voice was soft again now, tiredness straining it. "We've been talking about this for two years."

"And you said it would be different when we were married." The old Rachel would have said something like that with an air of self-mocking, but this Rachel choked it out like a wounded animal.

"Well, we're not married, so I guess I kept my promise."

"And you don't really want to be, do you?" she pressed. "You've been spending as much time as possible away from me, soaking up every second until you have to change, until you have to become…"

"I am human," he broke in. "I am a human. And a hawk. And an Andalite…and…Jesus, who even knows what else? Why can't you accept me for who I am? I accept you. And I love you."

He reached out and touched her face, and she lingered in his touch for a few seconds before pulling away.

"Do you?" she asked softly.

"Do I what? Love you? Yes." The hawk's gaze was softer now, but it didn't lose an ounce of intensity.

She shook her head fiercely. "No, I mean do you accept me? Because I'm not sure you do. Did you really think we were going to get married and live happily ever after and have normal lives? Do you think I have that in me anymore? Because I'm not sure I do."

He shrugged. "What do you want me to say? I think you could."

"And I think you could leave the hawk in the past and stay human for me. Not for anyone else. We don't have to go to dinner parties, or make speeches with Jake or go on talk shows with Marco. I just want you to do it for me."

The silence lingered and sliced through both of them.

"What do you want to do right now?" Rachel asked, already knowing the answer. "Right now…do you want to stand here and work this out with me…or do you want to get some wings and fly away?"

"I love you," he apologized.

They both knew that wasn't enough, but neither one of them could say it.

Later, he had gone flying again and she was hunched over on the steps out back, taking a long drag from a cigarette and letting the nicotine flow through her bloodstream in cleansing waves.

"Shit," she muttered to herself, running a hand through her hair.

…_but we all do end up becoming just like them, don't we?_

* * *

"Fuck," she muttered to herself, glancing over at Tobias sleeping next to her. She set the alarm to wake him in enough time for him to demorph. She ran a hand through her tangled hair and tried to shake away thoughts of the future.


	39. Speed Demons

"Would you slow down? I'm telling you, you're gonna get a speeding ticket."

Naomi sighed and glanced over at Rachel in the passenger's seat. "I'm not going to get a ticket, honey."

Rachel rolled her eyes. "We'd be better off with me driving."

Naomi chuckled. "I highly doubt that."

"When I'm the cautious one in a situation, we're in trouble," Rachel shot back without even thinking about it.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Naomi wondered out loud. "Have you been performing feats of danger after school that I don't know about?"

Rachel raged inwardly, not for the first time, that she needed to take a school year's worth of classes on how to keep her mouth shut. Then she realized that she had paused for too long without laughing off Naomi's question. She knew her mom was joking, but it was the kind of half-joke used to undercut a serious question. It was a conversational maneuver she'd come to think of as The Marco.

"What, are you kidding?" She gave a tense laugh that sounded even faker coming out of her mouth than she had imagined it in her head.

"Of course I'm kidding," Naomi said, still using The Marco. "I've just been wondering what you've been up to lately. I'm not trying to turn into some overly involved, nosy parent. God knows that ship has sailed. It just seems like…oh _shit_."

They both saw the flashing lights at the same time.

As Naomi pulled over to the side of the road and the cop car eased in behind them, Rachel found herself fighting the overwhelming urge to say "I told you so."

"Don't say a word, Rachel," Naomi said sternly, as if she had read her daughter's mind. "I'll handle this."

Rachel just rolled her eyes. Well, maybe this was her chance to get some practice at keeping her mouth shut.

The cop walked up to their car and knocked firmly on the driver's side window. Naomi rolled down the window and flashed the fake businesswoman smile that Rachel had seen a million times.

"And how can I help you today, Officer?"

"Ma'am, do you know how fast you were driving?"

"No, Officer, I'm afraid I have no idea."

"Well, this is a sixty mile per hour zone and you hit seventy-five. Is this your daughter in the car with you?"

Rachel snapped herself out of do-nothing mode and made eye contact with the cop who was sizing her up.

"Your mom's a real speed demon, huh?"

Rachel redid her fake laugh and tried to think of a way to make conversation without making the situation worse.

"Well, Officer, I guess you could say that. But she's my mom, so you know how it is. The things you put up with from the people you love. You used to have people you loved, didn't you? Maybe you had a daughter, maybe a son. Maybe both. Who cares, because now all you have are people who you wish and hope and, when things get really bad, even pray don't have to know what it's like to feel a slug rape their brains. They say you can't tell by looking, but I saw the little tremor in your hand just now and I think I can see just the faintest glimmer of human agony and depression behind your plastered-on smile. You probably hoped to work your way up through the ranks, and now you can't even scratch your own ass, can you? Well, don't worry, Officer. One day real soon a grizzly paw, or tiger claws, or maybe even an alien tail-blade will take the pressure off and do what you've been trying to do with that gun for so long now."

"Rachel?" Naomi's voice brought her out of her own head and back into the awkwardness of the silence between the three of them. "Answer the officer."

"Your daughter's not real talkative, is she, ma'am?" The cop gave a soft little laugh.

"No," Naomi fumbled, clearly embarrassed. "Rachel's more of the strong, silent type."

"I can see that," the cop joked, his voice smooth and charming. "I'll tell you what, ma'am. I'll let you off with a warning if you promise to make your daughter read something for me."

He reached for his pocket, and Rachel saw the hand fumble towards the gun in his holster, then fumble back for his pocket, still struggling slightly for control. It happened so fast most people wouldn't have even seen it. By the time the hand came out of his pocket with The Sharing brochure in it, the Yeerk had squashed another tiny rebellion.

"You make sure and read this, young lady." He was talking to Naomi but he had his eyes locked on Rachel. "Some socialization might do you some good. Teach you not to stare so much. And let me tell you something, The Sharing changes lives."

"I know it does, Officer." Rachel couldn't stop looking at him. "I've seen firsthand what it can do for families and for communities."

He seemed pleasantly surprised. "Well, I'm glad to hear it. You ladies drive safe now."

Naomi started to speak, but Rachel said it for her. "We will."

Watching the cop make his way back to his squad car, Rachel hoped that someday soon she'd hear a story on the news about a young, handsome, up-and-coming police officer who blew his brains out without explanation.


	40. The Big Four-Oh

"Hello?"

"Na-Naomi?"

"Dan?"

"Presently speaking, yes."

"Are you drunk, Dan?"

"I am buzzed, yes. Currently. At present."

"Jesus Christ, Dan. You're too old to be getting buzzed and picking up your phone."

"Speaking of getting old…happy birthday!"

"Thank you, Dan."

"The big four-oooh. Congrats, Naomi."

"It's actually the big four-three. Good job, though. You only missed three years."

"Well, it's the thought that counts, right? Isn't that what you always used to say?"

"Okay, Dan, I'm hanging up now."

"How are the girls?"

"And that reminds me. The only reason you should be calling my cell phone is if something happened with the girls. Of course, then that would be me calling you."

"How are they?"

"They're fine, Dan."

"And how are you?"

"Jesus Dan, I'm fine, okay?"

"Glad to hear it, Naomi."

"And how are you?"

"What?"

"How are you, Dan? How are you doing?"

"I have a girlfriend."

"Okay, then. Pretty great, huh?"

"Well, she calls herself my girlfriend. I just call her Chelsea."

"Chelsea, huh? Well, I'm happy for you."

"She calls herself Chelsea too. 'Cause that's her name. Chelsea."

"I guessed that."

"She's young."

"How young is young?"

"Old enough that I don't have to feel gross, but too young to get my witty pop culture jokes."

"Don't do that, Dan."

"Too late."

"Jesus, don't be gross. What I mean is, don't do the whole midlife crisis binge where you try to make yourself feel younger. You're better than that."

"Am I? I'm drunk dialing my ex-wife."

"You're better than that. I'm only saying this because I know you've been drinking, but…even though your jokes were never as funny as you thought they were, no one's ever made me laugh as hard as you."

"Well yeah, because I'm fucking hilarious."

"No, because you told even the worst jokes with such conviction and a determination to make them work that was infectious. That's how I always knew you'd end up on television, just like you wanted."

"Thanks, Naomi."

"You're welcome, Dan."

"Naomi?"

"Yeah?"

"Chelsea's young and hot, but she'll never be as beautiful as you."

"Thank you, Dan."

"Well, I'm gonna hang up now. Be sure and tell the girls I said hi."

"I will. Tell Chelsea I said hi."

"I won't."

"Good. And Dan? Be safe. Don't drive anywhere tonight. Call Chelsea to pick you up or something, okay?"

"You wanna call her for me?"

"Don't push it, Dan."

"Goodnight, Naomi. Or good morning, I guess."

"Good morning, Dan. I'll talk to you later."

"Okay then. Good morning and goodbye."


	41. Sweet Sixteen

Sara admired her work in the mirror and smiled. She'd managed to get the nail polish mostly on her short nails and not all over her fingers like usual. Her nails wouldn't be so short if she didn't bite them, according to her mother and everyone else in her life, but that was just one more bad habit she wasn't ready to give up yet. Still, if she could color inside the lines, then maybe today was going to be a good birthday.

Sara smiled at the mirror again, not because she found herself especially attractive, but because she couldn't help but think that she did look like Rachel had at sixteen. Sure, the heavy makeup and the black nail polish disguised it a little. And she knew that Rachel would have given her crap about her outfits, probably saying that she dressed like a goth-wannabe. And so what? Maybe she did. Still, Sara knew she had Rachel's eyes, no matter what Jordan said.

She reached into the pocket of her faded jeans and took out the money. She counted it, double-counted it, and sighed with relief. Exactly enough for the tattoo. She was getting a bear tattooed on her hip. That had been Rachel's signature morph, and it seemed like a fitting tribute. Just like pretty much everything else in her life, she wanted the tattoo to stay pretty private. Princess Jordan would say it was distasteful and morbid; an unnecessary reminder of death. Mom would say she was ruining her body at a young age. Craig would probably say it was hot.

That reminded her; she needed to break up with Craig. She kept meaning to, but other things kept coming up and she just never got around to it. Besides, he was an okay guy. The sex was okay; sometimes it was even good enough to be fun. Sometimes Sara wondered if sex for her was like what battle was for Rachel. Once you got past the initial fear, once you suffered through some pain and even some blood, the adrenaline kicked in and kept you coming back long after you had already realized the risks.

Yeah, she wasn't going to break up with him. He'd get the hint when she started hanging out with other guys. It's not like she'd go out with just anyone, or have sex with just anyone. But she wasn't going to be like Jordan; buying into the fairy tale of only ever sleeping with one person, getting engaged way too young, and wasting all of Mom's money on a big party and a nice dress. Sara wanted to make her mistakes now while she was still young. There was plenty of time down the road to become self-righteous and just no fun in general.

She pulled her jeans down slightly and looked at the spot where the tattoo was going to be soon. A memory of Rachel flashed through her mind. She remembered Rachel putting a Band-Aid on her cut knee when she had tried and failed at a way-too-ambitious gymnastics move. Sara guessed that maybe she had always wanted to be like Rachel, and had always fallen just shy, hurting herself in the process. She remembered Rachel putting that Band-Aid on and saying that everything was going to be okay.

See, that was love. Real love. Jordan could smirk and condescend all she wanted. Sara knew you couldn't find that kind of love with a boy, whether you kept your pants on or not. That kind of love couldn't be manufactured with rings in churches or in the backseats of nearly-totaled cars. Sara walked out the door that day looking forward to the tattoo, because that kind of love was the kind you bleed for.


	42. Dibs

It was perfect in the woods. Not even Tobias or Ax crawled out of their own loneliness to come and disturb hers. That was just the way she wanted it tonight, leaning against the hard bark of a tree and staring into the night.

"What are you doing?"

Rachel, already prepared for a night of solitude, jumped about a foot in the air.

"Didn't scare you, did I, Xena?"

Marco's typical smarminess annoyed her almost as much as the fact that he saw her jump. But she knew him better now than either one of them would ever be comfortable admitting. She heard the edginess in his voice; the same edginess that made her feel like jumping out of her skin.

"What are you doing, Marco?" She was almost too tired to be annoyed. Almost.

He shrugged. "Guess I just came out here to be alone."

"Well, I did too," Rachel snapped. "And I was here first, so get lost."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Marco snapped back without hesitation or fear, "I didn't know you could call dibs on the middle of nowhere."

"Well, you can and I am." She gave him a rueful laugh. "Animorphs rules."

He echoed her laugh back at her. "Animorphs rules. They are a bitch."

"So am I, I guess."

She was fishing for a response, and edgy as she was, she was fishing for the response she knew only Marco could give. Not the dutiful reassurance of a boyfriend, not the kind lie of a friend. Just pure, naked honesty between two equals.

"You really can be, yeah," Marco said honestly, meeting her eyes and nodding at her.

"All the time?"

Marco laughed again, genuinely this time. "Mostly, yeah." His voice softened a little. "But no, not all the time. And Jake didn't mean what he said tonight. I've known Jake practically my whole life and…" His voice trailed off for a second. "…and I'm not sure if he means most of what he says these days."

"How long do you think we can keep doing this to ourselves, Marco?"

He stepped closer and leaned against the tree with her. She saw him snap back into Marco Mode; saw him analyzing every angle of the situation without an ounce of pity. "Well…let's go down the list here, Xena. The more self-righteous moralizing Cassie does, the more she's probably trying to compensate for feeling like she's lost herself in this war. Based on how she's been acting lately, I'd say she's feeling pretty lost. Ax is still stinging from finding out that the Andalites aren't perfect heroes, and seeing as how he should have already learned that ten times by now, sometimes I still wonder if he's with us one hundred percent. You're probably gonna punch me for saying this, but Tobias is more hawk than human now, and that can't be good for the human that's left in there. Jake…hanging on by a fucking thread, man."

Marco paused and took a shaky breath. "You and me?" He gestured back and forth between the two of them. "Both burned out a long time ago. Not really sure what's keeping us going."

Rachel didn't say anything in response, because there was really nothing to say.

They stood there in silence for a little while before Marco's voice broke into the sound of the wind whistling through the grass.

"Rachel?"

"Yeah?"

"Just so you know, I officially call dibs on the Woods of Solitary Depression."

"You already said that you can't call dibs on the woods."

"And you already said that I could. Animorphs rules, remember?"

They shared a small smile.

"Yeah, I remember."


	43. Sharper Image

"Shit!"

She dropped the knife on the counter and jerked her hand away. The first sensation in most people's minds probably would have been the pain; the fear of the blood pouring out of their hand. And while Rachel did immediately reach for a towel to try and stop the bleeding, her first sensation was as familiar to her as a comfy old pair of socks.

There was the sudden, irrational surge of anger at her mother for buying expensive, super-sharp kitchen knives instead of going for cheap, dull blades like everyone else. Then there was the anger at herself for making a stupid little mistake that led to all this blood. It wasn't the first time, but it felt different in her human body. She was used to her stupid little mistakes leading to a lot of her animal blood being spilled when she charged too soon. She was used to pain, used to anger, but…this was different.

The bleeding had stopped now. It was such a small thing. She knew that it shouldn't have been any big deal as she stared down at the white kitchen towel that was now stained a dark red. But even still, just the tiny act of an everyday cut made the corners of her mouth curl upwards into a tiny smile.

It wasn't that she enjoyed feeling the pain or seeing the blood. If she enjoyed those things, she would have been the happiest girl in the world. What relieved her enough to make her smile at the sight of her own human blood was knowing that she was still capable of feeling pain as a human. Knowing that she could still feel the normal attachment and protective instinct over her human skin made her feel like Rachel The Human hadn't gotten completely lost inside Rachel The Animorph.

She knew she needed to morph away the cut. As much as she morphed in her everyday life, her mom and sisters would definitely notice if she had a pretty deep cut on her hand one day and it was gone the next day. Better to get rid of it right away before they saw it in the first place.

Still, she leaned against the counter for a few more minutes and enjoyed the unique pain of being human.


	44. An Hour And A Half

Dan surveyed the mall nervously. This was Rachel's territory, not his. Watching her eyes light up as they entered the automatic doors should have offset his guilt at this being his first one-on-one visit with her in months.

It didn't.

"So…" He was hoping Rachel would fill the awkward silence with chatter about all the different outfits she was going to pick out.

She didn't.

"So…" Rachel's voice and eyes were like a mirror reflecting his own uneasiness back at him. "What've you been up to, Dad?"

God, what had he been up to? And what the hell was he supposed to say? _Oh, not much, honey. Just powering through work until I can go home and drown my disappointment in one too many beers. Been on a few dates, but no one can compare to your mother. Too bad she'll never let me back into her life. What's up with you?_

"Nothing much, sweetheart," Dan lied, noticing that his voice briefly went up a few decibels. "How about you?"

"Nothing much." Rachel shrugged, and Dan could have sworn he heard her voice go up a few decibels higher than normal, just for a few seconds.

"So," Dan desperately reached for a topic that he knew for sure would get his daughter excited. "What are we gonna buy today? Maybe some cool new outfits for school? Or not for school? Just for hanging out? What?"

"Well," Rachel began, and Dan could tell that she noticed he'd been rambling, "I'm kind of in a hurry. See, I have this one friend, and he's been going through some stuff lately. His father died, and he recently did a really big favor for the rest of his friends, and that favor left him feeling really, really crappy. Anyway, a bunch of us are meeting up on the beach today to cheer him up."

"Oh." Dan tried unsuccessfully to mask his disappointment. "Well, what time are you supposed to be at the beach?"

Rachel glanced down at her watch. "In about an hour and a half."

An hour and a half. Dan sighed. This was his relationship with his daughter now, and he was still trying to get used to it. An hour and a half every few months. A shopping trip here, a dinner there. He knew he wasn't going to get to see the things Naomi would see. He wasn't going to hear about the dates, the friends, the school events. He wasn't going to get to ask her how her day was every day and listen to her make up half-hearted teenage lies to protect her father from the sordid truth. Those things belonged to Naomi now, and Dan knew deep down that they would never belong to him again.

Dan looked his daughter in the eye and forced a smile, remembering how he used to carry her through the mall on his shoulders. Rachel had been a shopper-in-training even then, pointing and grinning at the brightly colored clothes in store windows that caught her attention. If Naomi was getting a lifetime and he was getting an hour and a half, he needed to make the most of his time with Rachel.

"An hour and a half, huh?" Dan said in what he hoped was a light-hearted tone. "Well, I guess we'd better get shopping then."


	45. Clean Off

_Poor girl._

Even after all these years of working with dead bodies, there were still some that made Dennis shudder at the sheer ugliness of how they died. These bodies weren't your typical, run-of-the-mill old ladies who needed some lipstick and blush to make the greyish color of dead skin resemble their formerly living faces.

The last one as bad as this poor girl was the man who had been driving a Mini Cooper when the little car, along with this man, had gotten flattened by a semi. The guy's family who brought him in said that there was nothing left of the Mini Cooper, and there wasn't much left of the guy either. His mother wanted an open casket, though, so Dennis rolled up his sleeves and tried to position things so guests couldn't tell where the giant wounds were and grieving relatives wouldn't have to look at brain matter.

Even then though, Dennis was just so desensitized to it all. Even after dealing with the Mini Cooper guy, whose name Dennis couldn't remember for the life of him, he still went back to his apartment, microwaved himself a T.V. dinner, and then crashed on his couch watching lame reality T.V.

This girl, though…Dennis was getting depressed looking at this one. And it took a lot to depress Dennis. Two failed marriages and getting passed up for three promotions didn't keep him from whistling as he put down his Dunkin' Donuts coffee cup and went to work putting makeup on corpses. He'd found that it was actually easier dealing with the dead all day than dealing with the living. The dead ones didn't complain about anything, and if there was one thing Dennis hated, it was listening to people complain about their lives. He didn't have the greatest life ever, but he had a steady job, good money and a place to live. If that was good enough for him, it should be good enough for everyone else, too.

But here was this girl with her head nearly taken clean off. It had been some massive animal, as far as Dennis had heard. It was hard to separate rumors from fact these days. So many people had taken to hysterics and complaining after finding out about the aliens among them, but Dennis had barely batted an eye. He still got up, went to work, and came home. Life went on, and so did death.

Fixing up someone who had saved the world, though…It gave him a sense of importance as well as a sense of sadness for what this girl had gone through. As far as Dennis was concerned, most people were a bunch of whiners who didn't appreciate the little things that made life function. They were annoying; always reaching for things they couldn't have instead of just accepting their lives the way they were.

And this girl had died for that. She was lying here on a cold, metal slab with her head nearly taken clean off because she had sacrificed herself to save a bunch of whiners. Dennis sighed and thought for a second that maybe it hadn't been just for a bunch of whiners. Maybe it had been for the underachievers like him, too. Whether you settled for what you had or were never satisfied with anything, this girl had died for you.

Dennis picked up his tools and got to work. Everyone had made sure to tell him how beautiful she had been in life, almost by way of apologizing for this grizzly mess of a bloodied body. Hopefully he would be the only one to see her like this. It wasn't going to be easy, but if he could make Mini Cooper guy look good, he could make her look good.

Dennis smiled to himself as he focused in on the space between the head and the neck, hanging on by tendons in some places. That would be his first victory for her. As long as he could make it look like it hadn't almost come clean off, the rest would be cake.


	46. Book Club

It was supposed to be an excuse to get out of the house.

It was supposed to make her feel better; give her more socialization. It was hard for her to have her only daily conversations with a three-and-a-half-year-old who just wanted to ask why mommy's hair was so soft. She couldn't tell her son the truth; that mommy's hair was so soft because daddy made a lot of money and was always throwing her spending money. She couldn't tell her son that lathering, rinsing and repeating with the most extravagantly expensive product she could find online was one of those little luxuries that helped her justify deferring her own dreams and just supporting her husband's career.

And there was that word again. "Just." It seemed to come up a lot in the casual conversations that she did get to have with other adults. She would ask what they did for a living and their answers would range from doctors to teachers; construction workers to florists. But then they'd ask her the same question and her answer always had to be the same.

"Oh, I'm just a housewife."

She knew how valuable being a mother was. She knew that no one could ever take care of her son the way she did; knew how much he needed her and how grateful he was to have her around all day, even if he wasn't old enough yet to say those exact words. But there was still something about being "just" a housewife that made her feel unfulfilled and under-appreciated.

Maybe that was why book club wasn't having the desired effect of lifting her spirits. What had she even been thinking? Was there a more stereotypical housewife activity than going to book club? It was right up there with getting your nails done and making play-dates.

And that was the thing. None of the other…God, she hated to say it…housewives seemed at all bothered, at all unsatisfied with their situations. There was more chatter about the best hairstylists to go to and the best maids to hire at book club than there was analysis of the actual books. It was still good to have adult conversations, but it didn't exactly turn out to be the intellectual stimulation she had been hoping for.

There was one woman there that reminded her of Rachel, though. Jackie was her name. She had the stereotypical, all-American beauty that Rachel had had. But, just like Rachel, there was something behind Jackie's bright blue eyes that was anything but stereotypical. Jordan heard the other…there was that word again…housewives talking about Jackie behind her back in the way that jealous women do. There were never any direct insults, just backhanded compliments.

"I _loved _Jackie's sweater last week…but don't you think her hair is starting to look a little frizzy?"

"Jackie has _such _a great figure…but she's going a little overboard with the cleavage sometimes, don't you think?"

Jordan gave Jackie a heads-up one night when the two of them were hanging out alone, drinking a little too much and complaining about their husbands spending too much time at the office. The way Jackie threw her head back and cackled when she heard about the other…she really needed to think of a new fucking word…housewives' comments made Jordan think she was sipping mimosas with Rachel reincarnated.

"I swear to God," Jackie said in an elaborate stage-whisper, "these bitches are hilarious. Everything's so serious for them. I mean, for shit's sake, it's just a bunch of bored housewives pretending to be interested in books everyone should have read in eighth grade."

Jordan laughed. "Well, aren't we part of those bored housewives?"

Jackie shrugged. "Well, yeah, be we get how silly it all is. If you can't laugh at yourself…" She let her voice trial off faux-dramatically.

Jordan smiled. "That sounds like something my sister would have said."


	47. I Feel Pretty

Would you just stop it already?

It really is one of the most disgusting things about being human.

All humans do it, just like so many other disgusting things humans have to do to survive. I'm embarrassed that I still do it myself, but I still need my human body and I can't ever fully suppress its physical needs, as much as my intelligent mind might want to.

I notice how it drips. I think I notice that more than I notice the gross, musky smell or the slick feel of it. It was dripping off of her when I first saw her, years ago. I don't know why it's taken me this long to remember, or why I'm thinking of that moment now, looking at you.

I think it's how the sweat is pouring out of you like a waterfall, starting at your bald head and dripping all the way down, soaking through the cheap knockoff suit that your host always loved to wear like false advertising.

What's that? Surprised I knew it was fake? I used to use my daddy's credit cards to go shopping for real designer clothes. Whatever I wanted. I know the difference between what's real and what's fake.

I know you're being fake right now. Everyone begs for me to just get it over with. To just go ahead and do it. That way the pain can stop. That way you can stop feeling the warm human blood flowing from your head and your nose along with the disgusting sweat. Don't worry, though, I won't hit you with the gun again. We're all done with that part.

I'm sorry, I'm just having a really hard time keeping a straight face right now. First of all, did you really think you could screw over Visser Three and get away with it? That's almost as dumb as…well, as trying to screw me over. Not that you're smart enough to ever do that, even if I let you live long enough to get the chance.

Second, all that "go ahead and kill me" stuff is bullshit. Pure bullshit. Every Yeerk, every human, every Andalite, every fucking living thing in this universe wants to go on living. Nothing wants to die. Even creatures…creatures like yourself, no offense… who have the most pathetic lives will beg for them to continue when you put the gun to their head, or when you open the door to the pit of Taxxons waiting below.

Oh, don't cry, baby. It's not your fault. That's the human instinct taking over. Far, far better Yeerks than you have begged and sobbed tied to that chair.

Anyway, how'd we get so far off track? The first time I saw her was back when I did gymnastics. Back when I was gorgeous and popular and…well…almost as sexy as I am now. I know it's hard to believe, but I used to be just another high school girl. Hard to believe she used to be one, too. We were on rival teams, and I remember making eye contact with her later on in the meet. She was about to do a back handspring on the balance beam. Not exactly easy. Her eyes were pure determination, but even her killer instinct couldn't stop the beads of sweat from forming at her perfect hairline and dripping down her face like tears.

I have to admit…and I'm only admitting this to you because, well, we both know your expiration date is coming right up…I wasn't surprised when we found out who they were and I saw her picture. I remember those eyes. Raw, animal passion in a poor little pretty girl's bones.

What's that, sweetie?

There. Is that better? Me kneeling down so I'm at your level? I know, I know, my height and my beauty always _has_ intimidated the boys. No, baby, I'm not going to untie you. The others didn't get to move their own limbs and control their own stinky sweat right before the end, so why should you? You might be one of my last…so you and me? We've gotta make this a good one.

No Taxxon pit for you. What with all the sweating and crying, I think you deserve a more human death, with a uniquely human instrument. Now, a little science lesson. I'm not sure if you're aware, but if I shoot you in the head, you won't suffer. But if I shoot you in the gut, you'll bleed out.

Hmm…what should we choose?…let me think here…

Oh, I'm sorry, honey. You didn't really think I'd go for the head shot, did you? Don't you know me better than that by now? I'm telling you, it's so hard being a pretty girl. People don't pay attention to your personality, you know?

Here, I'll come back down to your level. Sweat and blood really are a potent combo, aren't they?

I know, I know. It's supposed to hurt. That's how we know it's real and not fake. Just relax, baby. It won't take _that _long. Just let the human blood flow out of you...let yourself squirm out of his ear. Here, look at it this way. They say the eyes remember the last thing they see before you die. Well, these human eyes get to remember my pretty face.

A guy could do a lot worse.


	48. The Hangover

It's a unique feeling; waking up in a haze, stumbling out of bed and trying to remember exactly what you did the night before.

Sometimes the memories come to you in flashes. A drop of blood here, a couple of screams there, a human body slumped over in the corner. Those memories are like a quick punch to the gut or a splash of cold water on your face.

Your fashion model face is looking puffy, red, tired. Your blonde hair doesn't look golden and luxurious anymore. You swear to God it looks and feels like straw no matter what you try to do with it. Maybe you still look perfect, like a magazine cover. Who knows? You can't be trusted to be honest with yourself, and who do you have to ask who won't lie to you out of pity or tease you mercilessly?

Tobias would tell you that you look beautiful even if you were smattered with blood and guts and God knows what else. He's done it before. And the part of yourself that you're ashamed of; the part that lingers in the darkness and gulps down the bloodshed like the milkshakes your dad bought you when you were little, that part wants to tell him to shut the fuck up.

Warriors don't do pity or love or beauty. Or at least this one doesn't.

Usually when your limbs start remembering what their job is and your legs actually start to move forward at a reasonable pace out of your bedroom, that's when the memories stop coming in flashes and start coming in medium-sized chunks of horror.

This time it's Cassie ripping a Hork-Bajir's throat out. Actually ripping; one swift movement like you might use to take off a Band-Aid in hopes of not prolonging the suffering. Seeing such a huge creature scream so loudly in pain and bleed out all of its power onto a dirty concrete floor reminds you that this war is a death sentence, even for those who might live through it.

Cassie had to take the Hork-Bajir out to keep it from killing Jake. You don't remember whether she killed it during its assault on Jake or directly after, in a pure fit of protective rage. You choose to remember her killing it while it was almost on top of Jake. Knowing that the gentlest girl you've ever known would rip someone's throat out to protect her boyfriend is enough. Just enough. The mere suggestion that rage, not pure preservation, could have taken over even Cassie is incomprehensibly depressing.

As you get dressed and make your way to school, you still feel hazy, beaten-down, hungover. You see Melissa Chapman walking towards you, and you dread making conversation with your former friend. The closer she gets, though, the easier it is to see it.

The way she's rubbing her eyes, the way her face looks red and puffy. The way she looks like she didn't exactly sleep last night, but passed out. The way that she's walking gingerly, as if she's embarrassed by every step, makes you think that maybe she passed out somewhere she should never have gone in the first place.

And there you are all of a sudden, standing face to face with Melissa Chapman, four pairs of glazed-over blue eyes recognizing each other underneath the makeup and the outfits.

"Man, Rachel, I had such a crazy night last night," Melissa says, her voice thick and phlegmy.

You just shrug.

"I know exactly what you mean."


End file.
